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There is no "list." You decide what pieces you feel are most powerful to you through many years of listening and study. There are, however, a number of pieces that you are expected to know as a student of composition at any serious music school - walking into a music school without having a thorough knowledge of "the basics" - the oeuvres of composers like Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, etc. - would be like attempting to attain an English degree without any knowledge of Shakespeare. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, in the end) for you, you can't get by in a serious pursuit of composition without a knowledge of and ability to appreciate modern and contemporary works, either (if we were to continue the literary analogy here, trying to study composition without knowing some of the important works by Ligeti, Messiaen or Cage and others would be something akin to trying to obtain a degree in literature without exposure to Beckett, or Joyce.) As this latter part of the repertoire seems to be a stumbling block for you, it may prove beneficial to have a list of works that might serve as "more accessible", yet still important introductions to the bodies of work produced by some of these composers. Here are a few: Cage: Sonata XIII from Sonatas and Interludes - Something akin to a lullaby that a music-box might produce; very lovely writing. Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra - a cornerstone of the 20th century orchestral repertoire. Debussy: La Mer - a cross between a tone-poem and symphony, one of the most important works by this composer. Ligeti: Musica Ricercata - a series of pieces for solo piano, mostly studies in the integration of folk music into what was becoming Ligeti's language at this time (although this was not necessarily his intention) - interestingly organized in that each piece in the set uses one more pitch-class than the last, culminating in a usage of all twelve pitches of the chromatic scale. One of these pieces is a funeral dirge in memory of Bartók, with sonorities that suggest booming church bells. Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms - as the titles suggests, a work for orchestra and choir after texts from the Psalms, sung in Latin. Messiaen: "Praise to the Immortality of Jesus" from Quartet for the End of Time - a singularly gorgeous meditation for violin and piano, wherein the violinist is given the somewhat strange expressive indication to play the part in a "paradisiac" fashion.

To me, the only way one can truly be "original" is to provide his own voice in his compositions. It is absurd to think that any person who takes any art seriously will put themselves in a box and NEVER grow outside of it. Sure, by society's labels they may not be seen as pioneers, but they themselves have grown and become better artists. If you keep to yourself, you'll find ways YOU can make new music. If these are new techniques, so be it. If it's rediscovering the awesomeness of "Kitsch" music, you'll find new ways to make people tap their toes. As somebody before me stated: it's more the artistic power behind the work that matters.

I no longer believe in 100% originality: every composition nowadays is at least in some point eclectic. I think the originality is not so important as it is a artistic power one posesses. It' hard to explain, you simply feel it when you hear it. I am happy though, there are less composers thinking about inventing sounds instead of writing music. I am also a firm believer in not inventing things, but making already invented material into musically accessible art. There were times when somebody invented something, (s)he immediately abandoned this, without searching the available resources of this invention. The audience never really accepted these novelties because there was no time to get used to them.