Stop printing orders of service.
Text and music that the people cannot, eventually, learn and repeat by heart are either ill-
Sing without artificial amplification.
Posture, gesture, vesture, prosody, rhetoric, cantillation, architecture, furnishing – all serve the purpose of getting one’s point across to a more or less large number of people, and all ( and thus the Gesamtkunstwerk of the liturgy ) are immeasurably weakened by the artificial intimacy brought about by the microphone ( and, in other, further, circumstances, the large screen ). See also the next point.
Sing everything.
– and in the vestigially oral culture that existed before electric and electronic media, rhetoric, including preaching, approached a kind of chant, which can be heard in some traditions to this day, as well as in early recordings of oratory. On the other hand, preaching has not always taken place in the context of the liturgy, and both exposition and exhortation belong perhaps to another sphere.
Sing only that which does not need instrumental accompaniment or harmony
to be musically complete.
That is, modal monophony. This might be the broadest definition or description of music truly appropriate for the liturgy. ( This does not mean that harmony or accompaniment should never be used. )
Quite possibly, sing nothing that is under a claim of copyright.
The combination of our economic system and the Church’s abdication, by and large, of its role as patron ( a role not without its own complications, no doubt ) of the liturgical arts requires many artists to act as independent agents serving a market, rather than serving the Church from within its own inner life. ( The Episcopal Church’s simultaneous provision of an official hymnal and claim of copyright on a number of texts making up that hymnal creates some significant difficulties.) People should certainly be able – should be enabled – to live by their art, but the results of the current model too often demonstrate priorities misplaced by necessity, if not also by choice. By contrast, some of the most truly liturgical new music I have come across has been created by musicians who, whatever their circumstances, have been able to turn their work loose for the use of the Church. The terms of US copyright law provide, at the least, a comfortable distance from recent fads and a useful perspective from which to view older ones.
Sing mostly that which was written for use at the kind of liturgy being celebrated.
This is a matter of form, function, and style. The texts of the Mass itself, with their inherent forms, have priority at Mass. Processional items should be used for processions. Hymnody mostly belongs to the Office, or ( along with other kinds of religious song ) to various kinds of devotions or other para- or nonliturgical events. Much music sung today at both Mass and Evensong is sacred concert music, which has its own, other, important place in the life of faith outside the liturgy. Songs not intended for some kind of Christian context do not belong in the liturgy – not because they are sinful, or are necessarily bad music or bad text, or have nothing useful to say, but because they belong to another sphere of human life.