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Assisting the congregation with joining in Christ's sacrifice to the Father requires sacred and beautiful music.
The liturgy should be sacred, and it should be beautiful, a foundational principle of the CMAA. Music must be an essential part of it. In fact, the Second Vatican Council endorsed the sung Mass:
Liturgical worship is given a more noble form when the divine offices are celebrated solemnly in song, with the assistance of sacred ministers and the active participation of the people.1
For the fathers of the council, "solemnly" and "sacred ministers" could only prescribe the Solemn High Mass, completely sung, with priest, deacon, and subdeacon. Many of the norms of the traditional liturgy were reiterated by the council, but not in a mandatory fashion, so that "a more noble form," leaves all to our discretion, and constitutes our mandate.
By tradition, there were two forms of the Mass, missa cantata or solemnis or missa lecta (sung Mass or spoken Mass). For the sung Mass, practically everything to be pronounced aloud was to be sung.2 Moreover, the sung form was definitely normative. The spoken form (low Mass) was only introduced in the Middle Ages, when mendicants who travelled for preaching could not be with a community for a sung Mass but would say their Mass privately. So, as still today with the Byzantine liturgy, the only form was the sung form. It could thus be inferred that the most suitable way to address God liturgically is to sing. Pope Benedict has referred to this principle:
When man comes into contact with God, mere speech is not enough. Areas of his existence are awakened that spontaneously turn into song. Indeed, man's own being is insufficient for what he has to express, and so he invites the whole of creation to become a song with him.3
Likewise, the council authorized the traditional forms of music, particularly Gregorian chant and classical polyphony.
The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given principal place4 in liturgical services. But other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action, as laid down...