"The high vocal register was actually preferred THEN. "
In Joseph Taylor and those around his age maybe - overpitching can be a feaure of old age
The tension produced by nervousness is also a feature of sending the voice soaring (Maccoll developed a whole series of relaxation exercises to tackle it)
Singing your songs in recordable fragments into a strange machine for a very eccentric foreign visitor like Grainger can't have been easy for farmworkers
One aspect of discussion has been whether Taylor's vibrato was natural or produced tension
Walter pardon once commented on how high he'd pitched his singing on a radio interview - it was evr a problem for him while singing to an audience, where he was always completely relaxed

"be happy to practise on me!"
Damn - why didn't I think of that earlier? (-:
Jim