Schroeder (Peanuts) Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity, the oldest and largest music fraternity in the world. In honor of Schroeder's passion for Beethoven, the Charles M. Schulz Museum (Santa Rosa) and the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies announced the launching in December 2009 of a permanent online exhibit of 60 of the 300 Schulz cartoons that involve Schroeder and Beethoven. Despite only playing on a toy piano, Schroeder is a very talented musician, who is obsessed with the music of Beethoven. Since he is Schroeder's "hero", he wants to be like Beethoven. Since Beethoven was a lifelong bachelor, Schroeder thinks he
Peanuts strip as one panel, partly for experimentation, but also to combat the dwindling size of the comics page. Later in the '90s, Schulz abandoned the characters Patty, Violet, Pigpen and Franklin. Schulz drew the strip for nearly 50 years, with no assistants, even in the lettering and coloring process. In the late 1970s, during Schulz's negotiations with United Feature Syndicate over a new contract, syndicate president William C. Payette hired superhero comic artist Al Plastino to draw a backlog of "Peanuts" strips to hold in reserve in case Schulz left the strip. When Schulz and the syndicate reached a successful