I'd like to share with you an article by Kurt Poterack on sacred music, but first allow me to present the principles of good music in general.
If you ask a Christian what makes a piece of music objectively bad, assuming they do not immediately talk about their subjective tastes ("I don't like it"), they will most likely point to the lyrics, or at best, to how well the music is performed. It seems the idea that a musical composition is actually good or bad in itself is just as foreign as the idea that art can be objectively judged so. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," they say.
Plato and Aristotle, however, did recognize objective criteria for the goodness of music in itself, as did Sts. Augustine and Aquinas after them.
Music while not moral in and of itself, is good or bad insofar as it disposes a person toward or against virtue.
As fine art in general is a form of imitation, according to Aristotle, so music in particular would seem to be an imitation of emotion, or better said, the passions of the soul. Emotion is not as such moral, but is good or bad in relation to the act which produces that emotion, and the act to which the emotion tends.
If a virtuous person strongly chooses a true good or rejects a true evil, his emotions which accompany that act are equally strong in moving him to that choice. A person who is not yet virtuous, on the other hand, may be led to reject a true good or choose a true evil by emotions that are not rightly ordered.
How emotions are ordered is so crucial in the moral life that anything like music which influences them, should be given careful consideration.
Good music moves us to feel the right way about things at the right times... to feel sad when we should feel sad, as much as we should feel sad, and happy when we should feel happy. When I say 'should,' I mean in a way consistent as a means to our final destiny, union with God.
Music does this by the inherent mathematical ratios of its pitch and its rhythm.
There is much more to be said on this subject. But suffice it to say that even though a person does not understand these mathematical principles of music, if he has been formed by good music, he not only enjoys that music and dislikes the bad music, but he also recognizes the order or disorder in his soul caused by that music. His ears are as it were 'open.'
In contrast a person formed by bad music does not have the 'sense' to judge good music from bad. The only way for him to learn to recognize good music is to become steeped in good music, but he can only do this at the instigation of another whose ears are already 'open' and so can point him to it.
Who better than the Church herself to do this, especially with regard to sacred music?
Music that is sacred is consistent with true worship. It moves us to feel an awe in the presence of God, and lifts us above worldly desires. In order to do this it must meet a further criterion in addition to the basic moral criteria for music.
Prof. Poterack explains,
the Church teaches that the music itself—not just the text—but the music must, in some way, have the quality of holiness...[S]acred music is music which, in service of the Divine Liturgy, sounds “set aside” for sacred functions (that is, it sounds “holy”) and is artistically well made according to the objective principles of the art of music (goodness of form).
Gregorian chant and Palestrina's polyphony are given by P. Pius X as examples meeting the criteria of sacred music. Mozart's Masses, surprisingly, do not meet that criteria, despite their goodness of form...
But then perhaps this is not so surprising to a person whose musical taste has been formed by true sacred music.
(Click for the article by Kurt Poterack.)
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