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Michelangelo created worthless pastiches. So did all those other Renaissance and Enlightenment ancient Greek/Roman copycats. Nothing of value, what a waste of hundreds of years.

Here are some of the more accessible serial works in my opinion: Berg: Violin Concerto Dallapiccola: Piccola Musica Noctturna Stravinsky: Requiem Canticles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=668QWMK-maQ Webern: Symphony http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKD_tZr-ZpY Notice how they all sound completely different to each other. Serialism is a just a compositional method. It has little bearing on the aesthetic of a piece. There's a lot more to it than writing 12 notes in a certain order. If you think that any of these pieces sound like mathematical computer music then I give up.

Is this a real-life, for serious question?

It does? Seems like a flawed logic to me. Composers were quite often at odds with their social contexts and their era's values, rather than showing their support for them. Why should it be different now? A flawed logic begets a flawed conclusion. It's not fair nor legitimate to make such an extrapolation of my worldview or the values I support, just based on that - let alone adding that it's also an "uncritical acceptance" of 19th-century values. You can certainly get to know me better than that. And I guess you'd expect me to prefer writing by candlelight, have a scandalous affair with a Grand Duchess and die young of tuberculosis or cholera :P ...

The superstitions of the Middle Ages were better? What you're not realizing is that the rediscovery (or reinvention, since they were not always sure about how it actually existed in ancient times--e.g., the birth of opera) of ancient thought and culture led people down a new path that blended the old with the new. People may have clung on to their philosophies because better ones did not yet emerge, but you are about the first person I've ever seen who appears to be attempting to dismiss what came out of the Renaissance and Enlightenment.

Not funny thing: deliberately misquoting. A bit funnier thing: an artist who proclaims artistic freedom - but also claims for himself the right to dismiss others' works as outdated worthless pastiches unless they fit his (very narrow) tastes ;) .

I think today is the day we get to know the finalists. :)

I don't have the time to post an enormous response, but this (brilliant) essay by Glenn Gould goes well in the context of the discussion being held: http://kunsthistorie.kunstakademiet.dk/mortlake/pdf/2011/gould1994a.pdf There are many ways to imitate while incorporating something which did not exist in the original (assuming one wishes to do this) but which could still maintain a high degree of similarity on some level or another. You could, theoretically, write a sonata with five themes which presented them in reverse order in the recapitulation, thereby creating something of an arch structure, but which was as diatonic as anything in the Classical era. You pointed to Brahms as one example, but I think it's clear that some people on this board would have been among his detractors if they had lived in his time. Music (that is, instrumental music) is more abstract than the other arts, which is why it can get...more of a free pass. People ascribe all sorts of historical meaning to this and that, but when I listen to some great concerto or symphony by Mozart or Beethoven, I don't have images of wigged aristocrats or burgeoning bourgeoisie in my head. I do, however, get more of that impression when I listen to the lesser composers of the times.

i use my real name and face but all the creeps ignore me :<

My ambition is to do justice to my talent (no more, no less). And to be able to get across to an audience whatever original musical message I might be carrying. I don't care about fame or about writing the greatest number of compositions of a certain type. However, I would, I guess like every other composer, wish to have my pieces performed, if not for recognition then at least to be able to get better feedback both from the actual human and real-instrument performances and from the echos and criticisms about my pieces (a feedback that will surely enable me to compose better in the future).