Schulz's Use of Music in the Strips

Charles Schulz knew that musicians appreciated his painstaking reproduction of Classical music in the strip, but exhibit co-curator Meredith theorizes that Schulz actually took the use of music a step further. He believes that Schulz intentionally selected the music in many cartoons to enhance the meaning and humor of the strips. In some cases the music plays a critical role and, in fact, Schulz's meaning is only partially understood or lost if the reader does not read music.

Schulz was no fan of Classical music in his early life, a fact that was well known to his World War II Army buddies. It wasn't until he went to work at Art Instruction, Inc., in Minneapolis after the war that he developed an appreciation and love of the genre. At Art Instruction, Schulz was surrounded by college-educated colleagues who loved literature, art, and Classical music. It wasn't long before he wrote to his Army friend Frank Dieffenwierth, "... I have not only turned modernist in art, but am now a lover of classical music. Boy, what a change. They'll never know me in the next war." In the stimulating and challenging milieu at Art Instruction, Schulz and his co-workers played games with Classical music in which they would quiz each other about the music or whistle a melody in turns as it went around the room. These kinds of games may have been in Schulz's mind when he began to use music without identification in the early 1950s.

We also know that Schulz, like many visual artists, liked to listen to music when he drew. In the first two years after World War II, he built up an extensive collection of Classical music records and splurged a "minor fortune" on a huge Zenith radio-phonograph player that could play the new "long-playing" records.

Surprisingly, Schulz could not read music. He was, however, committed to copying the scores as accurately as possible. Occasionally, errors such as missing accidentals or extra ledger lines crept in.

One of Schulz's great inspirations was to show the passage of time by using music from different spots in a single movement or from using music from two different movements. In a Sunday strip published on February 24, 1963, for instance, Lucy is listening to Schroeder play the first movement of the Sonata in F Minor, Opus 2, no. 1, in the first panel (mm. 119-20). In the second or third panels Schroeder has advanced to the second movement (mm. 3-5). The music from the first movement is about one minute from the end of the 7 1/2 minute piece. The music from the second panel starts at 10 seconds into the movement.

Meredith also discovered how extensively Schroeder knew Beethoven's piano sonatas and other works. Here is a list of the works he plays in strips over the years from memory (he never plays from a music score). Eleven of the 32 sonatas, which is not at all bad for an eight-year-old!

Piano Sonata in F Minor, Opus 2, no. 1
Piano Sonata in A Major, Opus 2, no. 2
Piano Sonata in C Minor, Opus 10, no. 1 ("Little Pathétique")
Piano Sonata in F Major, Opus 10, no. 2
Piano Sonata in C in Minor, Opus 13 ("Pathétique")
Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, Opus 22
Piano Sonata quasi una fantasia, C-sharp Minor, Opus 27, no. 2 ("Moonlight")
Piano Sonata in D Major, Opus 28
Piano Sonata in G Minor, Opus 49, no. 2
Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, Opus 106 (Hammerklavier)
Piano Sonata in A-flat Major, Opus 110
Bagatelle in G Minor, Opus 119, no. 1
Ecossaise in E-flat Major, WoO 83, no. 2
Ecossaise in E-flat Major, WoO 83, no. 6
"Für Elise," WoO 59