Could someone help me out here? What is Schroeder's meaning here? Does it have to do with a specific way of playing? Does "the breaks" refer to randomly-assigned factors, like say talent, in sayings such as "that's the breaks?"
I think Schulz is almost done with the whole "how does Schroeder play Beethoven on a toy piano" gimmick. When he finds a joke he really likes he isn't afraid to use a few variations or iterations, but he does eventually tire of it.
A break is a section in a piece of music, a pause in the main melody for effect that allows a player to take a brief solo. It's described here (along with other, more contemporary uses of the term in music):
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_(music)
The humor in Schroeder's comment seems to be that this is a comment you'd hear from a jazz musician (it's probably a direct quote, in fact) and not from a classical musician. Classical musicians don't get the opportunity to improvise a solo in the middle of a composition or vamp over some chord changes, you dig?
My take is that it's a simple double-meaning pun. "You gotta get the breaks" as in "catch a lucky break", as well as the above musical term.
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