{"id":1220,"date":"2009-01-13T23:41:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-13T23:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/playing-for-peanuts.html"},"modified":"2009-01-13T23:41:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-13T23:41:00","slug":"playing-for-peanuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/playing-for-peanuts.html","title":{"rendered":"Playing for “Peanuts”"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you love “Peanuts” — and who doesn’t? — you’ll find this item<\/a> from Wednesday’s Times especially fascinating:<\/p>\n

In a \u201cPeanuts\u201d strip from the mid-1950s, Charlie Brown walks through the first panel and finds Schroeder sitting in front of an adult-size hi-fi, his ear to the speaker. \u201cShh,\u201d Schroeder says, \u201cI\u2019m listening to Beethoven\u2019s Ninth.\u201d Charlie Brown inspects Schroeder\u2019s outfit. \u201cIn an overcoat?\u201d he asks. Schroeder leans even closer to the speaker and responds, \u201cThe first movement was so beautiful it gave me the chills!\u201d<\/p>\n

In the world of \u201cPeanuts,\u201d 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\u2019s invocation of Beethoven\u2019s music.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u201cIf you don\u2019t read music and you can\u2019t identify the music in the strips, then you lose out on some of the meaning,\u201d 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 \u201cPeanuts\u201d strips.<\/p>\n

When Schroeder pounded on his piano, his eyes clenched in a trance, the notes floating above his head were no random ink spots dropped into the key of G. Schulz carefully chose each snatch of music he drew and transcribed the notes from the score. More than an illustration, the music was a soundtrack to the strip, introducing the characters\u2019 state of emotion, prompting one of them to ask a question or punctuating an interaction.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe music is a character in the strip as much as the people are, because the music sets the tone,\u201d Mr. Meredith said. To understand what gave Schroeder chills, he said, you have to listen to the musical passage. \u201cWhen you actually hear the symphony, the whole thing feels completely different.\u201d<\/p>\n

That linkage is the central theme of \u201cSchulz\u2019s Beethoven: Schroeder\u2019s Muse,\u201d an exhibition at the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center here, which was jointly organized with the Beethoven center. (It continues through Jan. 26 at the museum and will reopen on May 1 at the center in San Jose.)<\/p>\n

Mr. Meredith spent more than a year identifying the compositions, gathering recordings and reinterpreting the strips; Jane O\u2019Cain, the museum\u2019s curator, researched Schulz\u2019s artistic process and music-listening habits.<\/p>\n

In the resulting show visitors can gaze upon the Beethoven strips, then tap a number into their audio guide and hear the music Schroeder is playing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you love “Peanuts” — and who doesn’t? — you’ll find this item from Wednesday’s Times especially fascinating: In a \u201cPeanuts\u201d strip from the mid-1950s, Charlie Brown walks through the first panel and finds Schroeder sitting in front of an adult-size hi-fi, his ear to the speaker. \u201cShh,\u201d Schroeder says, \u201cI\u2019m listening to Beethoven\u2019s Ninth.\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-r-us","category-this-and-that"],"yoast_head":"\nPlaying for "Peanuts" - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/playing-for-peanuts.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Playing for "Peanuts" - 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