There is an "immobility in amateur singers which composers for them have to live with. They like repeated notes and stepwise movement--which they get in many popular tunes today."
Speaking of a hymn melody: "Its popularity must be mainly due to its extreme simplicity. Not many tunes move only within the compass of a fifth, but this one does, and it could not be easier to memorize. In all other respects it is limited and unenterprising, but congregations will put up with a great deal of that if it brings with it the premium of demanding very little effort on their part. (Musicians constantly wonder why congregations in church tolerate so much dull and tedious music; but musicians have to live with a certain amount of that because not everybody is like them: they are like good tennis players having to play with rabbits.)"
I agree completely with this need to accommodate the man in the pew's musical ability, while rejecting the tone of superiority I perceive in the quote.
It isn't loving the boring or tedious, but returning to the familiar and easier so your focus can be on the Lord Himself.
As a pastor and musician, I think it is critical that church musicians reject an attitude of superiority to the congregation (why can't they appreciate more complex music?) and adopt one of service. Not saying you've got that problem, but I've seen it around now and then. Yes, you have more musical knowledge and skill and appreciation than most at church, but how you bring that to them to crucial. Just as a preacher needs to connect with people on their level and not just dish up a lot of Hebrew/Greek and heady theology in the pulpit, so music selection needs to be accessible and only occasionally challenging.
I remember starting a pastorate years ago and being excited to have the Trinity Hymnal and Book of Psalms for singing to work with as far as picking music every week. I went a little crazy picking too much lesser known stuff in my zeal to expand the congregation's repertoire. A wise deacon piped up at a Session meeting and asked if I could limit the unfamiliar number of hymns/Psalms to 1, 2 at the most, per service. I was a little grumpy about it at first, but he was right. I love the Psalms and ancient hymns we sing at church, but I think we can frustrate our congregations and especially visitors unknowingly when we sing too much complex and challenging music.
People usually come to worship music as a place of rest, NOT a time they want to learn something new and put in effort to explore creatively. The familiar facilitates worship in a way the new does not. We know this liturgically - routine is important - recall the CS Lewis quote about not wanting to feel experimented on during a worship service! The time we spend focused on the steps of the dance (learning new music or trying complex music) should be minimized in preference to enjoying the familiar dance. Not that we have to always cater to that ("Sing a new song to the Lord") but we need to serve them with the main goal of facilitating worship. That means considering the frame of human worshipers and managing expectations accordingly. Educating or innovating creatively in our music selection is a lower priority, though also important.
My favorite example of this: when 9/11 happened I was in seminary with a college campus next door. The college chapel people came over, planning a memorial service that night, wanting to borrow the seminary's hymnals. (They didn't have any.) They knew the CCM they were singing wouldn't cut it in the face of such tragedy. On a smaller scale, your average worshiper comes into church every Sunday seeking refuge from distress in the familiar.
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