Do you think any modern composers are as talented as composers such as Beethoven and Mozart?

No! Mozart was a very facile composer. Mozart and Beethoven should not be grouped together in this one, Mozart and Haydn should be because they were facile, meaning that composing music was very easy for them. Haydn lived in the patronage system, where you could be relaxing on a wednesday night and your boss comes to you and tells you he needs a new dance, or a new symphony for a Saturday night party. And to be successful in that time period, you would have had to produce. Mozart and Haydn were like that, hence the total number of symphonic production from the 2. Mozart had 41 symphonies, because he broke away from the patronage system, Haydn, who didn't, ended up with 104 I think. Beethoven was never a part of that, he was a perfectionist! If you see some of his sketches of symphonies lol, let's not go there. Beethoven ended with 9 great ones. So to answer your question, although technology has evolved over the years, with now notation software and all, I still do not believe modern composers are as talented. Software and technology don't make composers, you'd have to have it in you....they did.

Given modern technology and modern instruments (especially percussion and keyboard) I'm sure that Beethoven and Mozart would have written quite different music. Modern composers of the same ability? Perhaps John Adams or Nicholas Maw come closest to it. The last modern composer of genuine genius was, in my opinion, Benjamin Britten.

howard shore hans zimmerman danny elfman

The sounds and technology upgrades to our instruments are different than hundreds of years ago, but our current composers are just as great as their predecessors. The problem today seems that the predecessors have been immortalized by still having a household name hundreds of years after their death. Not sure how many of these will be recognized a hundred years from now, but some of our notable geniuses today, you will most likely recognize from movies are: John Williams David Arnold Jerry Goldsmith Henry Mancini John Barry Eric Serra Danny Elfman These are just a few, there are a lot of great others, but these are modern composers I particularly like. Paul McCartney is a great musician and musical talent, has done a fine job with the Beatles, the Wings, and solo. He has done 3 compositions, one most notably is Standing Stone. But the true question will be, can these names stand up to Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Stravinsky, Strauss?

Hans Zimmerman and James Newton Howard. They are the best right now, I feel.