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If you want an easy life, free of creative tension, neurosis and anxiety, don\u2019t become a composer. You spend half the time waiting for the phone to ring, then when a commission finally arrives, reality kicks in: \u2018Will my inspiration dry up?\u2019; \u2018Will they like what I produce?\u2019; \u2018Will I like it?\u2019. And that is the $64,000 question. Once a new piece is \u2018out there\u2019, anything can \u2013 and often does \u2013 <\/i>have play a part in the curious love-hate relationship that exists between composers and their own work.<\/p>
There are many reasons for a composer wishing he or she hadn\u2019t written a piece. In some cases they decide they simply don\u2019t like it, but there are also sad examples of over-popularity, political hi-jacking and even fatal performances. It\u2019s all here\u2026<\/p>
The problem: <\/strong>Saint-Sa\u00ebns wanted to be remembered for something more serious than a musical menagerie<\/p> Most composers would give their eye-teeth to compose a work as strikingly memorable and deftly ingenious as Carnival of the Animals<\/a><\/strong><\/i> (1886). Yet the great Frenchman Camille Saint-Sa\u00ebns<\/a> <\/strong>was so concerned it might deflect attention away from his more serious work that, with the sole exception of \u2018The Swan\u2019, he forbade its publication, keeping the score hidden away until after his death some 35 years later.<\/p>