From theatre, film and game composer Matthew Reid comes an amusing story: Reid was pleased to discover that a movement from his orchestral work Intervals was included in a recent official Spotify playlist of new classical releases, sequenced between excerpts from Act III of Siegfried and ‘Torna ai felici di’ from Puccini’s Le villi. Reid’s Intervals is now going viral – ‘well, modern classical viral’, he says. The catch? Intervals was written in 1992, when Reid was still an undergraduate. The lesson, he says: ‘Never burn your early works!’
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The Rambler 
The two pieces I’ve made the most money on are “Ain’t Got No Beef” based on a true story about how I went to Taco Bell and there wasn’t any beef written when I was 18 and recorded when I was 19 (only piece that got any real radio play) and “Melodious Monk” written and recorded when I was 21. The latter of which, with the recent Katy Perry lawsuit, would get me in trouble with Chopin’s estate over the octave-plus-a-half-step-and-back if Chopin’s works weren’t public domain. I wouldn’t put either piece in the top 25 in a list of my favorites.
I don’t think composers get to pick either which pieces the public will take to or academics will find important. So much of it seems arbitrary/capricious. Ultimately, I just want to entertain my friends and my friends are very thoroughly entertained.
Please don’t take any of this as complaining/ungratefulness. I know I’m making the world directly around me funnier, more musical, and maybe a tiny bit better, and that’s gotta be enough for any composer these days.