* * * * *
                                        
                                Musical in-jokes
                                        
> In the world of “Peanuts,” of course, Schroeder was the Beethoven- obsessed
> music nerd who lost patience when Lucy interrupted his practice and who
> called time-outs as a baseball catcher to share composer trivia with the
> pitcher. Yet musicologists and art curators have learned that there was
> much more than a punch line to Charles Schulz (More articles about Charles
> M. Schulz.) [1]'s invocation of Beethoven's music. 
> 
> “If you don't read music and you can’t identify the music in the strips,
> then you lose out on some of the meaning,” said William Meredith, the
> director of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose
> State University, who has studied hundreds of Beethoven-themed “Peanuts”
> strips. 
> 

Via news from me [2], “Listening to Schroeder: “Peanuts” Scholars Find
Messages in Cartoons Scores [3]”

I had always assumed that Charles Schulz [4] copied the music into his strips
instead of just making it up, and I also assumed it was, in fact, Beethoven
[5]. So it doesn't surprise me all that much that he matched the music to the
strip.

[1] http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/charles_
[2] https://boston.conman.org/
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/arts/design/14pean.html?_r=2&part
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_M._Schulz
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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