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It just takes time to grown mentally and spiritually. Sooner or later you develop at least some tolerance towards contemporary music you once rejected. It happened to me too. But there are some composers that I still don't really like: Bruckner is boring, Mahler is too "egoistic" for my taste (although I enjoy his 1st and 4th symphony), Messiaen is having some trouble with formal approach ("copy-paste" too frequently)... Among modern composers I always try to understand the content - even in 4'33'', even though I don't take such compositions very seriously. There are some composers which may still be too "dissonant" for many although not for me: Lutoslawski, Dutilleux, Tüür, Lindberg.

Today, we live in times where everything has to be instant. It has also infected many composers: no more patience to write music for several months (thank God for copy paste, right?), no more patience to create music which would last 20 minutes or more (thank God for minimalism, right?), also lack of interest to deploy good exisiting material into something fresh. The composers are either living in the world of pop or cross-over music or still believing they can invent something. Still, there are some great composers which live up to classical standards: Kalevi Aho (not always but quite frequently), Erkki Sven Tüür, Magnus Lindberg, perhaps also John Adams in his best music, Mark Andre Dalbavie. My personal wish is to attempt to come close as possible to these names.

My first real hurdle was becoming a Mahler-ite. At the beginning (meaning when I started really getting into classical music, at age 12-13) I didn't know anything about him but his First Symphony, which I tended to confuse at times with Beethoven's Pastoral or Ninth. But within a year and a half I got to realize how wonderful his works are, even if long. As of now, the only work by him I still struggle with a bit is the Third Symphony. Next step was Shostakovich, which I took a bit longer to love. But I totally do now. Prokofiev was never that hard for me, though. I have begun to come into terms with Alban Berg lately, but I still can't stand most of the atonal/serialist/modernist guys, no matter how long and hard I've tried. Let's not lose hope, though!