Music quality

Comment on the ABC's "Spicks and Specks"tonight:
'Why is there no great music in the churches any more?' and the suggested answer was 'Because anyone who can write good music doesn't go to church any more'.
A bit bitter in one way but given that the comment was made by pre-eminent Australian musical conductor cum wit perhaps worth visiting.
Two things that have surprised me about church music in my life:

1. That the Mass Settings and hymns that I sang as a choirboy in the 50s and early 60s which seemed eternal and universal at the time...and indeed lasted until the mid 70s .... now seem dated, and paltry. I will, I hope, never sing Onward Christian Soldiers ever again. (not that it was a particularly good example of eternal but it certainly was universal)
   
2. Equally well the great modern songs that began to replace them have had, by and large, a very short lived life. We sang Lucien Deiss's All the earth proclaim the Lord as if it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. And the Salisbury Mass Setting seemed set to replace Merbecke as the common mass setting of the Anglican Communion. (now no one seems to sing either, who would ever have imagined the death of Merbecke). Where are the songs of the Medical Missionary Sisters or those fabulous songs of Evie Tornquist. The great South Austraian songwriter, Robin Mann, has written many fine modern songs. But you look at the early ones, eg Father welcomes all his children and you realise that most of them have passed into disuetude. He continues to write, and (in my opinion) his later songs show he continues to improve as a songwriter but these songs have short shelf life. They are not, I suspect, Love divine all love's excelling or The God of Abraham praise. The tunes are not Picardy, Hyfrydol or Crimond. but we sing them and they work for a while.

Gill is right in ways, and wrong in others. He perhaps displays the classical musicians arrogance towards popular (successful?) music, but reminds us that the search for quality and excellence is not simply just writing volume and hoping that some small percentage will be excellent.