Chapter 1 sketches the generic contexts for Schumann’s Piano Concerto. It evaluates important theories of concerto form from Donald Francis Tovey to James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, and identifies a disconnect between these theories, which typically take Mozart as their point of orientation and trace a subsequent history through Beethoven and Mendelssohn to Brahms, and the milieu with which Schumann engaged, which was saturated with the practices of the virtuoso concerto and the models advocated by Hummel, Field, Kalkbrenner, Moscheles, Herz and others. Taking these influences as its starting point, this chapter builds an approach to the analysis of the Romantic piano concerto, which is put into action in Chapters 4 and 5.