Ellen Taaffe Zwilich was born in Miami, Florida, on April 30, 1939. The first performance of Peanuts® Gallery took place at Carnegie Hall in New York on March 22, 1997, with Albert Kim as piano soloist, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. In addition to the solo piano, Peanuts® Gallery is scored for flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, percussion, and strings. Approximate performance time is thirteen minutes.

In 1990, cartoonist Charles Schulz learned about American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and her music. Later that year, Schulz created a Peanuts® cartoon in which Peppermint Patty and Marcie attend an orchestral concert, featuring Zwilich’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra (1989). When Marcie tells Peppermint Patty the name of the composer “who, incidentally, just happens to be a woman,” Patty responds: “Good Going, Ellen!” 

Zwilich contacted Schulz, and the two became friends. Later, when Carnegie Hall requested Zwilich compose a work for a children’s concert, she contemplated the idea of music based on the Peanuts® characters. Schulz readily approved the project. On March 22, 1997 at a Carnegie Hall Family Concert, pianist Albert Kim and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra premiered Zwilich’s Peanuts® Gallery.

The composer provides the following program notes:

An open letter to the “Peanuts” Gang from Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

Dear “Peanuts”,

I have written some music for and about you.

FOR SCHROEDER: “Schroeder’s Beethoven Fantasy” is based on a few bars of a piece you play on your toy piano (Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata). Since you love Beethoven so much, I imagine you improvising and creating a new piece (a fantasy) on Beethoven’s music.

FOR LINUS: It seems that naptime is never far from your mind, or, at least, that you’re always prepared with your blanket, so here’s “Lullaby for Linus” just for you.

FOR SNOOPY: I think you’re really “cool,” and I know you like to dance, so get your paws in gear for a hot-blooded Brazilian whirl in “Snoopy Does the Samba”.

FOR CHARLIE BROWN: For all those times when life causes you to cry “Good Grief!”, a rather wistful, but not terribly sad: “Charlie Brown’s Lament.”

FOR LUCY: Who can go from perfectly calm to absolutely wild in a single cartoon frame: “Lucy Freaks Out”. (I hope you can hold your composure during this concert).

FOR PEPPERMINT PATTY AND MARCIE: With thanks for encouraging me in my work (“Good Going, Ellen!”) and because you’re such good campers: “Peppermint Patty and Marcie Lead the Parade”. Yes Sir!

“Peanuts® Gallery” was commissioned for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra by The Carnegie Hall Corporation. The music is dedicated to Charles M. “Sparky” Schulz in hopes that it will give him a small measure of the pleasure that his “Peanuts” characters have given all of us.