I think in the EF it can be a distraction. In the OF it covers a whole lot of awkwardness. It also prevents the priest from adding jokes about washing dishes during the purification of the sacred vessels.

I've had priests in the EF encourage me to improvise straight through, essentially. They said that it freed them from extended, awkward silence due to their slow and still somewhat tenuous grasp of the ceremony, and freed them to pray the words at their own speed.

If the priest offering the Sacrifice is praying better because of it, that's hardly a "horrific distraction."

In the extraordinary form, the music is integral to the liturgy; everything to be pronounced aloud is sung (with the brief exception of the concluding blessing). This seems to be the intent of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy and of Musicam Sacram, so that it should apply to the ordinary form as well. This does not preclude silences in the liturgy--there are many places, some long, some short, where silence can be extremely fruitful. The problem with this is that priests have not been trained to sing their parts; without the singing of the celebrant, the music loses its integral character in the liturgy, and the singing of the congregation becomes more incIdental; this has led to the substitution for proper liturgical texts of pieces whose texts are also incidental. l think that part of the problem that Cardinal Sarah addresses is that in recent times, the congregation has been expected to sing practically everything themselves, leaving little for the choir to do. But there is a kind of silence, a receptivity, for the congregation to hear the choir singing proper liturgical music.

I have to distinguish something, MJO, because I think it's not enough to say that music in the liturgy must beautify it and be real music, because in order to actually beautify the liturgy, it has to be in keeping with the nature and order of the liturgy. The music that is proper and ordinary to the Mass is the cantillation of the Mass itself, and is thus verbal music, which has always been regarded as supreme within the liturgy. Thus additional music is ornamental. While ornament is very good and can lead to a greater appreciation of the Mystery, there's such a thing as too much of a good thing when there's an imbalance of the elements of something. Ornament, the aesthetic, can disturb the proper proportion of the liturgy by intruding too often or where it doesn't belong. Romano Guardini and Ratzinger both discuss this in their "Spirit of the Liturgy"s as the primacy of Logos over Ethos. If Ethos, the aesthetic and beautiful becomes emphasized over and above the Logos, the rational order and truth of the liturgy, that aesthetic ceases to be beautiful and becomes shallow pleasantry and amusement without the depth of truth. What is truly beautiful will accord with what is true, with what is harmonious in its ordering, and the harmonious ordering of the Mass can be disrupted by what is excessive or in the wrong place, even if it is good and beautiful in a different context.

We should remember too that God speaks out of the silence in a "still, small voice", not in earthquakes and raging fire. So we need to allow time for sacred silence rather than filling everything with noise, whether that noise is electric guitars or orchestras. Even with the instrument that is most suited to use in the liturgy apart from the human voice, the organ, overfilling the Mass with majestic pieces or improvisations will still push out the silence in which God speaks. And we should always rely more on God's ability to speak as the still small voice through the art perfected by our predecessors in the form of Gregorian chant than in an overabundance of majestic organ themes, which can become so much clanging of drums and clashing of symbols. I think Rich_enough put it well.

That isn't to say there isn't a place for organ fills or instrumental music in the Mass, but it's important to recognize the proper amount and place that it should have, and how it should relate as a whole to the Mass and its chants.

I agree with MJO and Vilyanor, but I think there may be a larger issue at play here. I think that in our society as a whole, many people are very uncomfortable with silence. I find that many people are disturbed by quiet, whether it occurs at mass or at home. There seems to be a rush to fill every moment with something, sometimes anything rather than to be still and quiet.

Might we conjecture that silence is threatening to an empty mind?

Well, that's a pretty poor reason for silence, not that it necessarily would have made any effective difference whether the reasoning behind it was good or not. I think it's also been shown that people give more money at an offertory when they're not expected to sing a hymn at the same time.

Here at the 8pm "Praise and Worship" Mass has a "Communion" hymn and then another "meditation" (usually more P&W than the preceding one) and then the pianist hammers out that rhythmic muzak until the priest is ready to say the Post-Communion. It's absolutely maddening. Are we so afraid of silence? Can a Catholic school of higher education not treat its students like adults and leave them in silence? And piano is the worst possible instrument at that point. It's so percussive and rhythmic in a way that draws you entirely out of the numinousness and timelessness of the Mass and into the pedestrian and the here and now.

Here at the 8pm "Praise and Worship" Mass has a "Communion" hymn and then another "meditation" (usually more P&W than the preceding one) and then the pianist hammers out that rhythmic muzak until the priest is ready to say the Post-Communion.

At my parish it is ALMOST the same--except it's not a "P&W" Mass. But the music is continuous, including the "hammers out that muzak" (a felicitous phrase, by the way!!) part...here not hammered, but Taize-like repetition, repetition, repetition, .....

"You will be MADE to Like This!!!"

CONFORM.