Two things necessary for successful art

Paul Fussell, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, 1979:

All this is to say that art works by artifice, by illusion, and by technique, and that no amount of talent, idea, or largeness of soul or heart in the artist produces anything except through artifice or technique, through, that is, a mastery of the conventions appropriate to the art.

Bruce Charlton, Reviewing the Current Doctor Who, 2014:

The script-editors/ writers themselves, however talented, are what CS Lewis called 'Men without Chests'. At bottom the makers of Doctor Who apparently only believe in positive virtues of kindness and happiness. ... At bottom modern secular morality is just a matter of opinion; which sets a limit to how good, how deep, a script can be.

In this light, it is interesting that the explicitly Roman Catholic author Frank Cottrell Boyce has been hired as a writer - this means that there is at least the potential (if the bosses allow it) for a coherently moral story, with a morality more deeply rooted than 'doing this is what makes me feel good'.

There are two things that go to make art: matter and form. Matter is the content, Form is the technique. If either fails then the work of art itself will be a failure. Success in the one, no matter how great, cannot supply what is lacking from the other.

This is why enduring, classic works of art tend to unite technical mastery with a great subject or theme. Milton’s Paradise Lost sets out to “justify the ways of God to man.” Dante’s Divine Comedy is about the journey of the person from estrangement and sin to union with God. If we want some non-Christian works, Virgil’s Aeneid is not only about the founding of Rome (a subject not of universal significance) but also the resolve and suffering imposed by a vocation: mens immota manet, “the mind remains unmoved as the vain tears fall.”

Even in lighter or smaller works of art, where a weighty subject may not be appropriate, one needs a base of seriousness, especially a moral seriousness, or else the result will be thin. Take a comedy like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and compare it to Helen Fielding’s imitation, Bridget Jones’s Diary. Austen’s work has a moral foundation which the author herself takes seriously; therefore the events in which the comedy takes place are important and consequential in themselves. Fielding only has the morality Charlton describes above: ‘doing what makes me feel good.’ Nothing that happens has any importance except in relation to Bridget Jones’s feelings; and by necessity the comedy is more trivial and less funny. But it is not easy to separate matter from form, and in fact not only her theme but also Jane Austen’s artistry is superior to most modern writing.

Modern art, in all fields but especially in writing, tends to fail on both accounts. Writers now are ‘men without chests’ and do not believe anything has objective significance or meaning. Their work is morally thin; there is nothing there to chew on, no crunch. But they also tend to be inferior in skill and mastery of form than in former years. Partly through overt and conscious rejection of tradition, which means rejection of the great tools and techniques which have been handed down by the masters—it is like trying to build a house but refusing to use a ladder, hammer, or nails. But this is only part of it. Artists and writers are much worse educated than they used to be. Our educational philosophy, and the bureaucratic management of its practice, have worked together to ensure that most people are much stupider than they need to be.

In relation to hymn writing and liturgy you have a perfect storm: badly educated people who reject the tools of art and who do not believe in any objective meaning.