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The humor of today's "Pearls Before Swine" comic turns on the recontextualization of older texts into newer media forms. I don't want to spoil the comic, but Beethoven is stressing over the longevity of a piece he is writing, and, by the last frame, the narrative flashes forward to how Beethoven is heard today. The comic raises some familiar questions about reception and "remediation."

I wondered if Beethoven would have really wanted "the working classes - the commoners - to hear my music and know my name" or even worried about how his music would be received. From my grade school music classes, I remembered that Beethoven is used an exemplar of Romanticism. While this Wikipedia section argues that his music is not necessarily Romantic music as such, he would have been working in a Romantic intellectual environment, so it seems possible that he would have been concerned about longevity.

It's interesting to contrast the use of "Für Elise" as a ring tone and Brian Eno's equally familiar Windows 95 startup tone, which was specifically commissioned by Microsoft. The startup tone was deliberately created to integrate into a social space outside art venues, while Beethoven could have hardly anticipated the pervasiveness of recorded music we have today. The Beethoven piece certainly gained popularity as a ring tone because it's familiar and, more importantly, it's in the public domain. Despite the differences in intended audiences, it is interesting to note how both compositions have integrated into our aural environment today.