Why does young composers prefer popular music from classical?

[M forever]

Mikkel, the answer to your question is that most composition students you find in conservatories and music academies are total pseudos who just somehow want to be "artists" and somehow want to study music but don't have the abilities to study a performing discipline such as playing an instrument really well. Enrolling in composition is fairly easy in many conservatories, the practical tests such as playing the piano a little and some basic aural and written tests are often much easier than for performing courses, and in some, you can just enroll like you would in a literature class, basically by signing up.

Then you can walk around and pretend to be "a composer". Veeeery "artistic"! Especially since a lot of modern composing is just concocting whatever you want, as long as you can come up with or simply copy some intellectual theories about what you are doing. Or following some "trends". Most people won't criticize your BS because they fear to be labeled as "reactionary" or something like that, or simply "not open for new ideas".

Of course, composing good and original music is a very complex and very difficult art, but it is something that should come out of being a very good musician first, and that means a performing musician, and then growing naturally beyond reproducing already composed music. Then it makes sense to study composition techniques, explore what people have done before, find new ways to combine musical elements. But it doesn't make so much sense to just study composition without having a solid and deep practical musical background first.

But that's what a lot of these people are lacking and so they aren't really interested in studying and exploring their art, they just follow the latest trends and for many, that's enough to pretend to be something really special and "artistic".

Hope that helps.

[MahlerSnob]

I have to disagree with much of what's been said here. I have many friends who are composers at some of the most prestigious schools in the US (Curtis, Juilliard, NEC, Indiana, Michigan, Yale and Columbia to name a few) and I find them to have extremely eclectic musical tastes. While they are all primarily interested in current compositional trends and contemporary pop music, they also have solid backgrounds in the history of classical music. Most of them probably spend more time listening to Babbit, Boulez, and Birtwistle than to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, but that is only natural. They are, after all, composing music today and not 200 years ago. It wouldn't make any sense for them to spend their time emersed in older music when those techniques and concepts are not what is expected from composers today.
There are exceptions to this. I also know many younger composers - primarily undergrads - who have nothing but disdain for music written before about 1913 (Rite of Spring). These people are obnoxious and ignorant and give the rest of the composition community a bad name. By the time they are 25 they will either have wisened up and come to appreciate earlier musical styles and techniques or they have left the conservatory and gone into another, more suitable profession.

[mikkeljs]

I have to disagree with much of what's been said here. I have many friends who are composers at some of the most prestigious schools in the US (Curtis, Juilliard, NEC, Indiana, Michigan, Yale and Columbia to name a few) and I find them to have extremely eclectic musical tastes. While they are all primarily interested in current compositional trends and contemporary pop music, they also have solid backgrounds in the history of classical music.

Maybe the level is higher on theise school. 

[M forever]

Probably. What I said doesn't mean that there aren't also some very serious composition students. But I would say that overall, they are in the minority, for the reasons I gave above. It is just an area in which you can fake too much for it not to attract a lot of fakers. That's just natural.