The study of music should be to the sense of hearing what the study of art is to the sense of sight. It should cultivate the power of that form of attention known as listening.
The study of music should complement the study of history, e.g., in the movement from Gregorian chant to polyphony.
Children should learn the ‘aesthetics of number’ and learn to ‘hear number’ through learning harmony and measure.
Students should learn and experience how music expresses the mystery of God. The spirit of adoration should be cultivated through acquaintance with the tradition of sacred music, chants, and hymnody. Students should be able to sing the Salve Regina, the Regina Caeli, and other prayers appropriate to different liturgical seasons.
Students should learn the language of music, both in terms of musical notation and the ability of different instruments and notes to ‘tell stories’.
Students should participate in a schola cantorum and, if possible, learn to play an instrument to internalize music, appreciate its beauty, and foster creativity and discipline.
Saint Cecilia was a young Roman noblewoman who lived in the 2nd or 3rd century AD; though promised in marriage, she converted to Christianity and vowed her virginity to God; she would sing to God in her heart as instruments played at her wedding feast and was later condemned for her faith, dying after three blows of the executioner's sword failed to decapitate her.
Revered for defiantly devoting herself to the harmony between her soul and faith rather than earthly music, she became the patron saint of musicians, with her persistence in turning worldly music into spiritual song-inspiring artists and composers over many centuries.