Eventually, he stops after he has a dream in which Beethoven strangles him.īut it was Schroeder’s love of the composer- and his devotion to Beethoven’s music and legacy- that became iconic and inseparable from his character. Charlie Brown, who frequently picked up and experimented with various musical instruments, makes a valiant attempt at Beethoven on the violin. Schroeder was not the first to endeavor to play Beethoven’s music in the comic strip. But, Schulz knew the comic value of a character like Beethoven. Interestingly, his favorite composer wasn’t Beethoven at all- it was Johannes Brahms. I think it’s important to try to break beneath the surface in everything you are doing, rather than just drawing surface cartoons,” Schulz said. “So when I do things about medicine, or historical things from World War I… it’s all very authentic. In a 1994 interview he described the importance of this authenticity, crediting it with the publication of his first book after the publisher noticed Beethoven’s music. Schulz did not read music, he simply bought a few scores and copied sections of the music into the comics very carefully. He attributed his love of music to working at an art school, where fellow students who were studying music helped him amass an impressive record collection. According to his widow Jean Schulz, he could sit remarkably still for the entire show, rarely even fidgeting at all. Schulz was a well-known classical music fan, attending concerts regularly. Schulz took the drawings quite seriously, hoping that readers would take the time to figure out exactly what Schroeder was playing. We know that Schroeder played Rachmaninoff because Schulz drew the sheet music into the comic itself- a striking bit of visual realism in a comic featuring the imagination of children. But when Schroeder sat down at the instrument, he was already a prodigy-playing music by Rachmaninoff.

Charlie Brown gamely attempted to show Schroeder how to play. But after watching his daughter enjoy her toy piano, artist Charles Schulz decided to incorporate one into the story. Initially, there was no specific reference to music, outside of his house number matching Beethoven’s birth year of 1770. Schroeder first appeared as a baby in the comic strip Peanuts in 1951. With overwhelming majority, the music was by one composer: Ludwig van Beethoven.

Overhead, sheet music played an active role in the story. For five decades, a familiar sight greeted readers of the comics section of the newspaper: Schroeder at his toy baby grand piano, with Lucy leaning backward against it.

Beethoven bank bust