True, Charles.
We do know that there is some Bach which doesn't exactly excite the taste buds of the mind. Some that's not so good as Buxtehude's less good. Comparing such as these, though, with the drivel that is skillfully marketed today is, I think, rather disingenuous. The likes of Titcomb, while it will not be around a hundred years from now, is far, far, better than too much of what is unashameably offered by our unprincipled publishers to unwitting and gullible musicians and publics today.

But! There is, if more people actually knew of it, an almost unlimited amount of new music that is worthy to stand in the shadow of our Palestrinas and Bachs. I've seen some of it composed by some members of this forum. It is being written effortlessly by students in our universities, and in the English cathedral tradition. There is so much of excruciatingly fine quality being written now that it is astonishing that we have people who settle for music that with some effort could stand beside Willan's worst. Why? We haven't the choirs that can sing it - because choirs, in contemptible nose thumbing of Vatican II, are not being 'assiduously cultivated', because our elites (read bishops and priests and their preferred 'musicians') don't want to go there. One could go on.

I don't think, though, that arguing that we don't know that of the past that didn't stand the test of time, is really a respectable argrument. In fact, we often do know what didn't stand the test of time every time something has been dragged out of a monastery attic and published as a long lost treasure - a 'treasure' that is singularly unremarkable; or, every time a doctoral candidate needs untrod fodder for his or her thesis we are presented with yet another 'undiscovered' genius who, but for satisfying someone's degree needs, would remain in well-deserved oblivion. The truth is, we know very well what mediocre works of the past 'didn't make it'.

I stand by my argument.

Also, Bach [etc.] wrote hundreds upon hundreds of pieces, and didn't get famous for his mediocre ones. That's really different than some of the contemporary writers whose most famous and popular pieces are really actually very good at being (take your pick) schmaltzy, sentimental, etc.

I don't think anyone (reasonable) would say John Rutter is bad at what he does. Someone might object, though, to his choice of what to do. Others might object not to the existence and publication of the music, but to its use in particular contexts (for example, the liturgy).

I'll amplify, just a tad, what I said above.

I really don't think that we can get by so easily by saying (essentially) that 'we don't know what they _____________', or 'what less talented composers were ________'. To a very large extent we, in fact, do know. Musicology is filling in the blanks every year, even though there are aspects of mentality, psyche, and aestheses in historical times that will be forever a closed book.

We even know what they prized in music and what they panned. Many are the treatises that make it all too clear what was done and by whom it was done that was admirable and that was poor and trite, and, above all, tasteless. We do know that taste was admired highly in numerous historical eras. It's absence as a desirable qualifier in modern craftsmanship, musical or otherwise, is both glaring and unfortunate.

As for performance, we know that a skilled organist of the early XVIIth century could easily improvise the sort of cantus firmus treatments that are found in, say, Scheidt's Tabulatura Nova. Ha! These days, not even an Olivier Latry could do that. Later on, C.P.E. Bach, amongst others, tells us plain as day what keyboard artistry sounded like in his times. With the organs and scholarship we have, it isn't at all difficult to play a Tunder or a Titelouze awfully closely to what they would recognise as theirs.

I mentioned, above, the 'discoveries' of 'forgotten geniuses' by researchers, some of whose discoveries are less than wondrous. Still, we have at our fingertips more inferior music from times past than we can shake a stick at. It has survived in spite of itself. Going through choral and organ bins at conventions and music shops one fingers piece after piece by composer after composer of past times (not to mention present times) that aren't worth the paper on which they are printed. Rolling one's eyes over the page is like comprehending in one blink that one is looking at the musical version of Dick and Jane, or a novel near a grocer's cashier. Conversely, we are blessed with ever more impeccable scholarship and academic worth in fine editions of most any great master or lesser light that one could desire: literally any and everything from the Buxheimer Orgelbuch to Tournemire and beyond; and, chorally, there is nothing not to be had from organum to Lauridsen. The excellent. The poor. The neither good nor bad.

Too, we have much very good music by composers who are relatively unheard of. I recently was very tempted to put a couple of the trios by Johann Ernst Rembt on a recital, but turned him down because he would have been embarrassed in context of the other music on the recital. But his music remains very fine. I've had these pieces for a very, very long time, and one day I'll present them. Ditto Daniel Pinkham's voluntaries for the Brattle organ.

Yes, we do know far too much to be saying that we don't know what 'their' inferior music was like. In fact, most of us have likely played quite a bit of it. It was just like our inferior music: not intellectually (nor, sometimes, even emotionally) satisfying. Poor musical craftsmanship. And, if Tallis ever did write inferior music I doubt seriously that his conscience would have permitted him the dishonesty to perform it. The same is true of some, perhaps not all, of our other luminaries. Craftsmanship in music, like that in other disciplines, was a thing highly respected, and in relation to which honesty and integrity were far more important than they are in todays world. That much we know. Plastic, fakery (even the slick 'gentrification' of the patently false [as in s-i-m-u-l....]), and the throw away mentality had yet to take their toll on the societal morality, the collective intelligence.

(Sorry. This turned out to be three, maybe four, tads.)

Both are important.

Yes, Charles -
And you could likely get a grant
for researching your
'The Occurrence of Five-Tone Systems in Igneous Rocks'.
And, it might well get featured in JAMS.
(On the other hand -
who's to say that you'd actually have to write it?)

Does the lack of belief amongst many Anglican musicians make a difference?
Should it matter?
Is the quality of the music affected?

I think that this is an interesting observation. I know, too, that in the symphony I play in, very few would call themselves church-goers. Is it a function of being well-educated (in this day and age), that people are non-religious? Or is the music a stand-in for believing in God? I think it's also worth keeping in mind, is that someone may be agnostic / atheist for part of his life, but that doesn't mean he will be agnostic / atheist forever. And maybe singing in a choir keeps that person in tune with God and religion to some degree.

.

They don't do anything bad - they are just very slack and unceremonious.

There was a priest from that order who customarily offered Benediction after weekday Mass and would come out of the sacristy carrying the kneeler in one hand and a smoking thurible in the other, and the Benediction cope draped over one shoulder, singing O Salutaris Hostia in a thunderous bass voice.

German efficiency and incredible strength aside, it was a startling sight.

Important considerations, Chris - very important.
I will stand behind my statements above, but qualify them to assert that only Catholics should be acolytes, servers, 'ministers' of any kind, lectors, and so forth, and, I do believe that there are canons to that effect. The thrust of my remarks concerned, mostly, choir members and people in other capacities, in which such persons are adding their voices to Catholic praise and are under the direct supervision of the choirmaster. I do think it a very sweet and delicious irony that their song ineluctably praises and glorifies the God about whom they may not have orthodox belief. Many years ago, probably back in the sixties or so, I read the tale of a young man who one day had swaggered smartly up to the tabernacle of Notre Dame, Paris, and snarled that he did not believe. At the time I read of this that man had become the very orthodox archbishop of Paris. I can't remember his name. God will not be scorned. It is he who will have the last word in everyone's life.

I do, though, share your concern. The form of the service is crucial. Leadership is inappropriate. Service in lesser capacities, whatever the persons inward disposition, glorifies God in spite of him or herself.

I think that it might well have been Lustiger.

Here is one of my favourite quotes,
by Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger,
which appeared in The American Organist
of February mcmxcix -

WHEN MAN, THE DWELLING PLACE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
transforms Creation into a work of art and imprints on it
the seal of God, he reveals in this act of worship that all creation
can and must sing out the Glory of God.

WHAT the delicate skill of art and worship can accomplish with
this instrument, we must all do together for the whole of creation,
revealing thereby that for which it was created by God;
to give glory by fulfilling our human mission.

FOR God has entrusted the universe to us so that we might rule over it,
not as tyrants, but in the priestly fashion of those who act as
'stand-ins' of the Creator.