Music playlists not retaining play order

I have been using iTunes, and then Music app, for ages. I maintain my music files using the Music app on my Mac, and then I sync my iPhone so that my entire music library and all my playlists are available on my iPhone.

This has worked reasonably well for a while, but today I synced my iPhone and I found that none of the playlists retained the play order that I'd created them with. On my iPhone they seemed to assume alphabetical artist order and then release date order, regardless of how I'd ordered them on my Mac.

Today I created a shuffled version of my 'main' playlist with 1350 or so tracks on it, so that all the tracks appeared in a random order. It is something I have done in the past regularly.

I find this handy because, unlike with using the 'shuffle' feature on the iPhone, the 'already shuffled' playlist can be left, something else listened to and then I can return to the shuffled playlist where I last left off. (Using the iPhone shuffle button re-shuffles the list every time.)

On my Mac the tracks in my smart playlist were randomly shuffled, but when they arrived on my iPhone they were in alphabetical order of artist, so I got all the Abba tracks in a row and then further in a load of Beatles tracks in a row. This is NOT what I want.

But then I discovered that it is worse than that! Although I can create a shuffled smart playlist on my Mac, if I quit the Music app and then re-launch it, the shuffle-ordered smart playlist I created is no longer shuffled, and it too is also in alphabetical order.

I am getting rather annoyed with this now. Is it me, or has Apple changed how the Music app works?