Schroeder (Peanuts) once mortified when he forgot Beethoven's birthday. When Charlie Brown's baseball team is required to have a sponsor to play games, Schroeder's sponsor is Beethoven. In early strips, Schroeder frequently plays the music of other composers. Once, Lucy implies that his idolization of Beethoven is excessive, and she asks him what he thinks of other classical composers such as Schubert, Brahms, Bach, and Chopin. Schroeder simply replies, "They were great too," and continues to play Beethoven. On another occasion, Lucy remarks to Schroeder "Beethoven wasn't so great." Irritated, Schroeder asks Lucy to explain her comment. Lucy replies, "You've never seen
Schroeder (Peanuts) in 1965's "A Charlie Brown Christmas". Lucy asks Schroeder to play "Jingle Bells". Schroeder plays it in the style of a conventional piano, then manages to generate the warm tones of a Hammond organ, but Lucy cannot recognize the tune until the now-irritated Schroeder plays it, in a high register with one finger, in the tones of a normal toy piano. Until the France3 production, La bande de Snoopy, this was the only time in the history of the television specials that his toy piano ever actually sounded like a toy piano. In 1966's "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown",