Great Religious Composers: Johannes Ockeghem was intended to be the first in a series (the project seems to have fizzled after the second volume dedicated to Machaut). I've long taken this delightful book (by my grand-teacher) as a model of how to write for a lay audience, and after fretting about it being both out of print and gone from the library shelf, today discovered the 1953 copyright was apparently not renewed. Like a visit to Chartres, rereading it suggests the motto 'reform of the counter-reformation'. ;-)

The opening chapter is very interesting for the picture of the natural habitat of music like Bruckner's:

"As I recall the old days when I was a boy in Vienna, and we went, off and on, to High Mass at the ancient cathedral of St. Stephen or the neo-Gothic Votivkirche where my piano teacher was organist, my memory of the musical treat to which we were looking forward is always associated with the little chirping sounds typical of an orchestra tuning up. It was not the cheerful, uninhibited gurgling and squeaking noises that would come from the pit of an operatic orchestra; it was discreet, subdued, timid, as would befit the dignified atmosphere of the sanctuary: a few violinists quickly plucking a string or two to test the pitch once more, an oboe player softly trying a couple of notes to make sure of the condition of his reed- and as soon as the celebrant had made his entrance there would pour forth solemn or gay blasts of brass...

...in our suburban parish church the musical part of the service was usually on a more modest scale, but even there they would try their hands at the orchestral masses by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, or Schubert [!!!]..."