I agree with you JANK. I agree that most modern composers talk about tonality as old fashioned, and I agree that this is a ridiculous view to take.

The very fact that tonality has been done is what allows complex and original musical creations based not only on the notes and their relationships themselves, but also on the listener's EXPECTATIONS regarding these relationships. Many modern composers seek to shock the audience into feeling something simply by throwing out strange sounds and effects. It is far more shocking to hear something surprising when you have expectations of what you should hear. At the most basic level, if I hear
I-ii-V-7-
I expect the resolution to I. If I don't get it, if I get a dim-7 instead, I'm surprised, and that makes me feel something. This is one of the major sources of emotion in music. Ok, so it's not that shocking, seeing as it's been around since before Bach, but with the rich vocabulary of extended tonality there is much more possibility for creating emotion-inducing music. Throwing random sounds at the listener without this framework based on thousands of years of expectation and convention may be intellectually interesting, but I don't see how it can generate real emotion.