A timely article - Ratzinger on Music and the Liturgy

An very interesting article on popular music and the liturgy, and how the Council of Trent dealt with similar issues, allthough I daresay that the music of today's common liturgies is perhaps more problematic than what the Council of Trent dealt with.

The larger excerpt by Cardinal Ratzinger on Music and the Liturgy is worth reading. His explanation of popular music and rock music:

On the one hand, there is pop music, which is certainly no longer supported by the people in the ancient sense (populus). It is aimed at the phenomenon of the masses, is industrially produced, and ultimately has to be described as a cult of the banal. "Rock", on the other hand, is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a cultic character, a form of
worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship. People are, so to speak, released from themselves by the experience of being part of a crowd and by the emotional shock of rhythm, noise, and special lighting effects. However, in the ecstasy of having all their defenses torn down, the participants sink, as it were, beneath the elemental force of the universe. The music of the Holy Spirit's sober inebriation seems to have little chance when self has become a prison, the mind is a shackle, and breaking out from both appears as a true promise of redemption that can be tasted at least for a few moments. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp 147-8).