Peanuts by Charles Schulz for October 15, 1958
October 14, 1958
October 16, 1958
Transcript:
Charlie Brown leans on the piano whiles Schroeder reads. He reads, "Here's an ad for a used car for forty-three hundred dollars.<br> <br> He continues, "Do you know how much Beethoven got for his first symphony? Fifty dollars!"<br> <br> Charlie Brown looks at the reader whiles Schroeder continues to read.<br> <br> Charlie Brown says, "Beethoven never would have been happy selling used cars.."<br> <br>
In Beethoven’s early 19th century Vienna, they used thalers (the root word of “dollar”). 50 thalers would have been a little over half a kilogram of silver, or about US$432.25 in 2022 dollars. However, the economy of the period was such that 50 thalers was the equivalent of eight months of salary for an unskilled labourer, so while it was not a fortune, it was a decent sum for a 30-year old composer beginning to make his mark on the world.