Two years after Beethoven's death, the composer and critic Robert Schumann published his first work, a series of variations for piano based on the name "Abegg". Over the following ten years he found his compositional voice through collections of lyrical and highly individual pieces for piano that often attempted to explore new levels of inner feeling and poetic meaning in music.

If 1840 was Schumann's "song year" and 1841 his "symphonic year," then surely 1842 was his "chamber music year." To console himself while his wife Clara was on a concert tour of Europe early that year, Robert turned to the study of counterpoint and the chamber works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Upon Clara's return in April, Robert plunged into an almost non-stop flood of works that, save for his three String Quartets, op. 41, feature the piano in various settings: the Piano Quintet, Op. 44; the Fantasiestücke, Op. 88 for Piano Trio; and the present Piano Quartet, Op. 47. Begun on October 24th, the last work was completed in less than a month.

Being a pianist, Schumann conceived these works almost as extensions of his solo piano music, with the strings often united either in opposition to, or in imitation of, the keyboard.

The slow introduction to the quartet's first movement takes its inspiration from the similar opening of Beethoven's String Quartet, Op. 127, with its question and answer format. The Allegro's first theme consists of broken chords and a decorative run on the piano; the cello later treats this same theme but elongates it into an expressive melody line. The second, livelier theme features the strings imitating the piano's scales. Unison staccato in the piano and cello opens the Scherzo, which boasts two contrasting trios, a structural trait common to many of Schumann's Scherzi. Calm and contrapuntal is the folk-like first trio. Syncopation dominates the second trio, gaining in intricacy as it goes. A sensuous cello solo introduces, then proceeds to dominate, the Andante cantabile, making the rounds of all four instruments. A sudden mood change, with syncopated rhythms, leads back to the first theme of the movement, first in the viola, then piano, and finally back to the cello. The finale is an energetic sonata rondo. The opening theme is contrasted with two others, the first a lyrical melody introduced by the cello, the second a tense staccato theme set in imitation among all four instruments. The piano opens the central episode with a lighter, more relaxed melody in the subdominant. After a shortened restatement of the opening ideas, the entire quartet presents a fugato of the opening theme combined with running passages to give a jubilant coda.