The texts stimulate our intellect, have effective catechesis, and promote devotion, while the instrumentation and melodies and harmonies set the mood, influencing us on a visceral, emotional level. I agree that we should be primarily concerned with the text as the source of doctrine and catechesis during the Mass. It is similar to the Byzantine way, and the maxim lex orandi, lex credendi. Liturgy should reinforce doctrine as we know it. It should lift our minds and teach our spirits about the Truths of the Catholic faith.
But instrumentation, melodies and harmonies cannot be ignored. Take a sacred text, set it to “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” and do it with a show-tune and tambourines and harmonica, and you’ve got something that is distinctly un-sacred. You’ve just trivialized the holiness of the words and sold out God’s purity for something worldly and banal. We’ve got to make sure that the method and the message are synchronized here. The message is the text. The method is the music. When I hear a show-tune with tambourines and harmonica, it doesn’t matter what the words are, my mind is transported to a place that isn’t disposed to worship of the Holy Trinity, a place that isn’t suited to sacred liturgy, a place that makes me think more of hard-drinking blues musicians in a bar choked with cigarette smoke and cheap perfume more than it makes me think of majestic liturgy in a magnificent church led by holy priests in sumptuous vestments and refined altar boys swinging fragrant incense.
All the senses must be engaged for right liturgy. The texts of the propers engage the intellect but it is the music and instrumentation which engages the hearing and our visceral, emotional responses depend mostly on the latter. So let’s attack liturgical deficiency in all areas at once. If the texts can be improved first before all else, then so be it. But let’s not be satisfied with only half the battle.
