When considering musical masterpieces, it’s tempting to think that composers know full well that they are in fact composing masterpieces. Perhaps this happens from time to time, but it’s more common for a composer to have no conception of his music’s worth.
Case in point: Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Fur Elise,” today arguably the single most popular solo piano composition on the planet. Beethoven wrote it in 1810, then put it in a drawer. He was, at that moment, the Western world’s best-known composer and could easily have arranged for the piece’s publication, but he let it languish, apparently dismissing it as a trifle. Decades after Beethoven’s death, the manuscript of “Fur Elise” was discovered and the work began its climb to No. 1 on the piano hit parade. Other examples exist, none owing so much to chance as that of the piano piece, “To a Wild Rose.”
