Schulz’s Beethoven: Schroeder’s Muse

Hey, it's Beethoven's birthday today. How do I know that? Because of Peanuts. Because Beethoven is Schroeder's favorite composer and he would remind us every December that the 16th was the man's birthday.


The Charles M. Schulz Museum has a new online exhibit about Peanuts and Beethoven beginning today. Here's the press release:

Hear the Music of the Peanuts Comic Strip
for the First Time On-line in
Schulz’s Beethoven: Schroeder’s Muse

New On-line Exhibition opens
on Beethoven’s birthday, December 16th

www.americanbeethovensociety.org/schulzsbeethoven/

Santa Rosa, California. Musicians are often surprised to find that they can actually play the music notes floating above Schroeder’s toy piano in the Peanuts comic strip, and they are even more amazed to learn that it’s not just anyone’s music Schroeder is playing—the compositions were created by none other than his idol, Ludwig van Beethoven!

Now visitors anywhere in the world can hear the Beethoven excerpts that Schroeder plays in the Peanuts comic strip with a new on-line exhibition devoted to Schulz’s Beethoven, Schroeder’s Muse that will premier on Beethoven’s birthday, December 16.

Schulz’s Beethoven, Schroeder’s Muse features 60 cartoons that include meticulously drawn music from Beethoven’s piano sonatas complemented with manuscripts, first editions, and artwork from the rich collections of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San José State University. Visitors to the on-line exhibition can listen to the music, travel to other websites to enrich their understanding of the strips, and explore cartoon and music history.

Excerpts from the complete recordings of Beethoven’s sonatas are performed by internationally–renowned pianist Craig Sheppard, Professor of Piano at the University of Washington in Seattle.

An earlier version of the exhibition was mounted at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa from August 16, 2008 through January 26, 2009, and from May 1 through July 31, 2009, in the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library at San José State University. Both the on-line and the mounted exhibitions are joint projects of The Charles M. Schulz Museum and the Center for Beethoven Studies (San José).

PEANUTS © United Feature Syndicate, Inc.