As the strip opens Schroeder is playing a sad short piece in the lamenting key of G minor that Beethoven completed in 1822 (Bagatelle, Opus 119, no. 1). Testing of individual strands of Beethoven's hair and a fragment of his skull have revealed that he suffered from lead poisoning that may account for some of his physical ailments.

Lucy once again interrupts a serious piece with a stupid question that infuriates Schroeder. Standing on his beloved piano, he yells a list of the composer's woes at her: suffering, physical pain, deafness, multiple love rejections, money problems. Schulz made the following remarks about creating this Sunday strip in his book Peanuts Jubilee (1975): "For a long time I had thought that the sentence "Lobkowitz stopped his annuity" was an extremely funny sentence, and I was happy to find a way to use it." (Schulz mistakenly wrote "Therese" for Josephine von Brunswick here. Therese never married; Joseephine wed the baron.)