Schumann, Vienna and the Cat

Robert Schumann—one of the most imaginative figures of the Romantic era—and concert pianist Robert Silverman: in both lives, brief but psychologically complex sojourns in Vienna became decisive crucibles, testing ambition against reality and shaping the emergence of fully formed artistic identities.

Their two stories unfold in counterpoint in Schumann, Vienna, and the Cat, illuminating one another across time. In the first half of the book, Silverman traces his own artistic formation in Montreal to his decisive years of study in Vienna (1961–1963). Interwoven with this personal narrative is the parallel story of Robert Schumann, whose formative struggles and ambitions are followed to the moment he, too, left Vienna in 1839. The second half of the book is devoted to extended essays on Schumann’s Kreisleriana, Op. 16, and Humoreske, Op. 20—works born of those Viennese years and examined here through historical context, literary influence, and performance insight. The result is neither conventional biography, memoir, nor purely technical analysis, but a meditation in two voices on artistic maturity, self-scrutiny, and the long journey toward integration.

Schumann, Vienna, and the Cat offers readers—especially emerging classical musicians—a model of how talent is shaped through uncertainty, risk, and self-examination rather than immediate mastery. At the same time, it invites older readers to look back on their own formative years with renewed understanding, recognizing that maturity often emerges from precisely the turbulence that once seemed misguided or excessive.