I am more on the side of fahl and mh on these arguments.
Paul, firstly I fully respect your opinion. But I have a question. Suppose all composers in the 16th century thought that traditional music of that time was good enough since it sounds 'good' and attracts an audience, do you think there would have been Bach who adopted the tempered scale and wrote the well tempered clavier? Same with the 17th century, if everyone thought Bach was the ultimate fo all music, would there have been Haydn and mozart? And suppose at the end of the 18th everyone thought Mozart is the ultimate, would there have been Beethoven with his Eroica or Grosse Fugue?
And in the mid 19th century no one could get out of Beethovens influence, even Wagner who was so obsessed with B that his first symphony sounds like it was written by Beethoven, but yet Wagner broke tradition by writing music for drama and paved the way for modern film music. And by late 19th Mahler and Strauss were already coming dangerously close breaking the tradition again.
To somoone living before Bachs era, I believe even the music of Brahms would have sounded cacophonic, let alone Mahler or Strauss.
I guess your argument would be that there is a sharp break after Schoenberg due to atonality. However I would imagine that the change from church modes and diatonic scales (pre 15th century) to chromatic scales (16th?) to the tempered scale (17th) were all probably equally ear shattering for those times.
Perhaps atonality is a larger leap and it will take time, maybe another 100 years before it is commonplace in concerts.
But I would imagine that thousand ears from now, if humans manage survive, someone will be listening to Salonene or Ives on their headphones while journeying from Mars to Jupiter on a weekend trip to home. The soundscape so perfectly fits the stars and heavens I think if we were in the same room listening to this music you would agree about the orchestration. Besides the quesiton of tonality, the orchestral colors created by some modern composers are simply outstanding. Isnt that fascinating?
I am not at all saying everyone today should write like that. We have Mr Peppercorn in these forums who is perectly happy writing great compositions in the viennese classical style. I am myself a tonal composer (yes I need to show my work here unlike msot of you!), but I do not feel that atonal composers are a sham or con artists. Many of them are highly talented and are exploring new directions. I respect their efforts in the same way as I respect your music.
Anand