As a young middle-class Catholic in the south-east (just) of England, I can testify to the counter-culturalism - although sometimes I do wonder if it’s just a sort of Catholic hipsterdom rather than something more profound. Either way it’s expressed in a lot more than just musical preferences.
And as a student of history whose BA thesis was on Anglican church music in the 1840s and '50s, I can also testify that complaints about “modern music ruining our church” are quite definitely nothing new. While I don’t have my notes to hand and just the bits I pulled to use in the dissertation (sadly, as it would have been wonderful and hilarious to quote in full), one example of exactly the same sort of complaint was published in 1843. The author was interested in Anglican churches but also pointed out, and contemporary accounts bear him out, that it could be applied to any denomination. Anyway he pointed out things like:
There will always be composers of popular songs which speak of the age in which they are written. Such composers are always to closely be followed [Dr Druitt was so incensed he was prepared to publish split infinitives] by a band of flimsy song-writers who so poorly set their texts which speak of a one-dimensional Saviour; whose trash is in unnecessary abundance spawned daily and then proceeds to perish utterly before it sees a year of sunsets.
and
When we hear such *vapid nonsense *in a Church, then there is something less reverent than there should be.
The author of the pamphlet then went on to decry the use of “popular tunes” (which in his context meant patriotic-folk tunes like ‘British Grenadier’, but today would include the sort of thing that wouldn’t be too out of place in a Taylor Swift concert, not that I have anything against her/her music), and “popular composers”.
He then attacked the recently-published ‘Stabat Mater’ by Rossini with something along the lines of it “beginning in tolerable purity before suddenly degenerating into bizarre theatrical roulades”.
On the idea that 'the Devil ought not to have any music for himself", he rejoindered with “the quality of the ‘music’ I do not question. But sure a more appropriate spirit might have suggested that what is fit for the Devil’s service is hardly also fit for our Creator.”
His final “zinger”, after (as the article you linked does), castigating the sheer un-singable-ness of the music then customarily in use even for hymns, is worth quoting just because people in the 21st century don’t use such wonderfully evocative language much:
It is impossible to find words degrading enough to express its most irredeemable and insufferable meanness and vulgarity.
My point, apart from revisiting my well-trodden academic ground, is, that while the (subjective) quality of the music used throughout England, was poor - as was the objective quality of the singing even from “professional” college or cathedral choirs - it then got very much better, and whether or not the church-singing of our grandparents, parents, or great-grandparents, was “best”, there was undoubtedly in the century following the publication of the tract I quoted above, a marked improvement in both.
So really, while I agree with the article’s analysis of the music often in use except in very traditional and/or wealthy parishes, I don’t entirely fear for our musical future, whether Catholic or Anglican.
