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There is surely a difference between being true to 'oneself' and being 'true' to 'whatever one THINKS oneself is'.

Had Rozsa stayed true to 'himself' in that way, he'd never have been in film-scoring at all, dismissing it as 'foxtrots', and he'd never have scored a string of mediocre pics in the 1950s, producing some of his best music. The same is true of Korngold and 'Robin Hood'.

Often what we think is our true 'self' is just a construction of environmental prejudices and stereotypes. The 'self' can't just be assumed by the ego. With Dr. Rozsa, if you gave him an idea, he excelled and ran with it as no other composer. But he often needed to be GIVEN an assignment, or to have a SUGGESTION put to him about, say, how good it might be to record a 'Vintner's Daughter' suite. Kodaly could see the great symbolic nature of the 'Peacock', where Rozsa would only write a 'Theme and Variations' with Finale with no name linking it to any artistic overall idea. That's the only limitation Rozsa had. But it made a difference. He needed assignments.

In an interview somewhere about Andre Previn, he dismissed jazz as 'bloody deedly-dee nonsense'. It's a vewpoint. But he staightjacketed his attitudes. His obsessive nature led to his detailed and complex and emotionally intense music. He seems to have felt he needed these constraints to focus his whirlwind. He self-imposed 'rules' upon himself, like 'no electronics in the first Century' etc.. Had he kicked aside the traces, would he have been even BETTER? Or would he have become lost? There's often an element of uncertainty and fear in his tenser concert works but it's not much talked about. He was human.