Lamentable Congregational Singing

This from Soho the Dog about the pitch lowering of congregational hymns:

Hymnals have, in fact, been getting progressively lower. In the 1955 Presbyterian Hymnbook, most soprano lines top out around E-flat or E, with a few occasionally getting up to F. In its 1990 replacement, The Presbyterian Hymnal, the tunes top out around D . . .

Leaving aside the whole lack of part-reading-sufficient musical literacy, it's interesting to note that the upper range of the newer hymnal coincidentally corresponds to the ceiling of pop-style belting rather than higher classical/choral-style singing. If you're not doing a whole lot of unamplified choral singing as a matter of childhood educational course, it's that much harder, later on, to get your breath and muscle memory working in such a way to really get a substantial head voice. Those high F's would probably cause a flip-and-crack transition in more young female voices than, say, forty years ago--even fairly accomplished teenaged singers I've worked with have often, under the influence of pop and contemporary R&B, only ever spent time in their middle and belt ranges.

This blogger adds commentary:

Matthew Guerrieri is almost certainly correct in attributing this to the decline of the choral tradition in churches and schools - if you never use your high register as a child, it's very difficult to develop it as an adult. The broader problem, though, is a widespread reluctance to sing at all, a lack of confidence in producing any vocal sound whatsoever. If the loudest you're willing to sing is a mezzo piano (any louder, and the person next to you might hear you!), it will be difficult to sing a range of more than an octave. Even at the best of times, congregational singing has a slightly embarrassed, reticent quality to it - no-one wants to sing.