fahl5:
I am so happy that you managed to read my post before I deleted it, as it was intended for you, and I eventually did not wish for the rest of the forum to be subjected to that kind of message; I have done it in the past and lived to regret it.
However I didn't delete the message because I didn't mean what I said. And I still believe that it is a problem of comprehension (at least I hope it is). I am sure you are very erudite in German but in English the points keep escaping you... There is no shame in that of course, but it is becoming tiresome for me to be consistently misinterpreted and misunderstood, and having to constantly re-write the same things in different ways until I get through. So, on to a more polite post:
You posted a list of great composers chronologically from the past, basically pointing out how one generation succeeded another while rejecting the previous style and introducing a new one. How does that have anything to do with what I have been saying?
Every composer you mention was a consummate master of the "previous" craft, and while seeking new paths of expression, they all employed the rock-solid theoretical foundations they inherited from past generations. Mozart and Beethoven did not employ as much counterpoint as Bach did, but they knew more than enough about it to create their own masterful polyphony. Schoenberg abandoned functional chromaticism for dodecaphony, but the key word here is 'abandoned'. Id est, he was a master of it in the first place. Debussy and Ravel did the same in their own ways, etc. Maybe there are one or two exceptions here and there in an overwhelming majority of rule.
So, bringing back the discussion to a little bit on-topic, I re-iterate (in yet another way), that my condemnation of most YOUNGER "modern" and film composters is that the former hypocritically and conveniently shun tonal relationships and polyphony and jovially don the 'Emperor's new clothes' of complexity and convolution, and the latter litter the fine film-music repertoire by mapping a different kind of music's structure on symphonic writing (dumbing it down mercilessly to their level), and offensively presenting other people's work for their own (see my signature).
Finally on that, I never said that everybody should write tonal music, or WIlliams-like music in film (quite the opposite; cloned Williams I find hilarious). You - and many others in the western world - appear to be confusing the current liberty one has to write for orchestra in any style and idiom they see fit without attracting criticism for that choice (as they would in the past), with the actual right to criticize the execution of that work, for that style or idiom. I won't criticize anyone for writing in a style that is repellant to me, but I know enough about this to be able to say whether someone has written a piece of s*it, in that or other style.
So far as your philosophical musings and beliefs are concerned, remember that they are not universal or correct just because they are more recent. For myself, I am enthusiastically going against the zeitgeistian grain by not being a relativist, but an idealist instead.
Everybody else: I never said that one needs to know 16th century counterpoint to write film-music for God's sake! It was an example mostly directed at academically trained composers, and an example that to be able to write for orchestra convincingly (Herrmann, Jarre, Williams, Mancini, Steiner, Broughton, Bernstein convincingly), you cannot do it no matter how many cookbook 'phrases' and Symphobic chords you buy. And Hans is not a successor of Williams as the latter was say of Tiomkin's. He is a conqueror and a plunderer. None of the habitual passing the torch from 'previous to next' there. Whoever is sequencing loops for orchestra is a) because they very simply cannot do any better, and b) is adding to the general brain damage. And yes, those are my personal views.