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You have to have a tradition. You can't tear it all to pieces and expect to produce anything important. Composers from Mozart to Richard Strauss changed the language slightly, but it still remained the same language. Basing my judgment on his operas, I would say Strauss is the greatest composer of the 20th century. Leoš Janáček is another great composer, who is just beginning to be discovered.
Of the Americans I have heard, I'd say Samuel Barber may survive.
It took an awful lot of arrogance for Arnold Schoenberg to dismiss the historical tradition of music and invent an entirely new one. Of course there are uses for the twelve-tone system. For a composer like Alberto Ginastera, who always sets extremely violent texts to music, the system becomes rather appropriate. There is also Alban Berg, especially in Lulu, and Luigi Dallapiccola. To me, these three are the most impressive twelve-tone composers. My feeling is that the twelve-tone system is incapable of expressing anything but violence.
ON MUSIC CRITICISM A critic has to be very much for or very much against something. To be hated is the mark of a good critic. But every critic, I think, is proudest of his crusades. Above all, I crusaded for Anton Bruckner, who until 1952 was not recognized by anybody in New York except me. I feel that I am at least partially responsible for the revival of his music. Then, of course, I had a little crusade for Soprano Beverly Sills, about whom the New York Times never said a decent word.
Music criticism is a parasitic occupation. If you live, like Bernard Shaw, at a time when you can introduce a Wagner to your readers, you can become a great critic. But if you cannot crusade for a contemporary composer, I don't think you can make much out of music criticism. I hate to say so. but I don't think music criticism has much of a future.