What is "classical music"? When Schoenberg came along with 12-tone atonality, I think he destroyed creative thought and turned music into mathematical formulae. If you were to play some wrong notes in most 20th century music in the school of Schoenberg, you probably wouldn't even notice that you made a mistake.

I admittedly don't know much about what's being pubished today though. I would say that many film scores, like Gone With the Wind or Dr. Zhivago could be characterized as classical.

And mrenaud, you can't stand any of those composers? Who exactly do you like pre 20th century, just out of curiosity?

I've sampled, and noted audience reaction to, enough 20th Century music to believe that 12-tone music is a dead end, as is most of what was written to be "classical" music, and that what will become "classical" will be other forms. As Frungy said, film music has replaced the incidental music to plays, just as the musical has replaced opera.

12-tone is as formulaic as traditional functional harmony. Schoenberg did deviate from the row when he felt like it, he (unlike some others) did make music with it. Total serialism, on the other hand, is a dead-end (though, here too, some composers, notably Boulez and Nono, did make music with it).

There are many pre-20th century composers I do like, e.g.:

- Haydn
- Beethoven
- Scarlatti
- Liszt
- Dvorak
- Mussorgsky

And some 20th century composers who used tonality in interesting ways (e.g. Prokofiev, Mahler, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, etc.).