Comics

Nun hab’ ich ewig Leid und Grämen!

There hasn’t been much in this space lately—that’s what an impending 11-service Holy Week gauntlet will do to one’s productivity, I guess. But, in the interests of catching up: a couple weeks ago, the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra had an in-house “Composer Madness” competition, in which players got to vote on matchups in an NCAA-style bracket of the League of American Orchestra’s list of most-performed composers. The final round pitted Beethoven against Mahler, at which point Kathryn Bacasmot flattered Soho the Dog HQ with a request for a commemorative cartoon, to run on the group’s Facebook page.

No big upset here; Beethoven took the crown, so this is what ran (click to enlarge):


Had Mahler won, this is what would have run:


I love how, in that last panel, Ludwig came out looking like a pre-1960 Peanuts character.