Probably depends on your community.

Me, I hate announcements. I'd rather make things obvious - and I prefer projection or large screens, provided it fits the architecture (some churches, it just Doesn't).

But if your congregation is used to announcement's, it will be a long hard road to phase them out.

We don’t announce anything, and our ordinary goes on the hymn board.

Is it necessary to announce the hymn if everything is in the worship aid?

No.

I'd prefer to dispense with announcing the numbers when people can read them on the hymn boards, but giving the number seems to help more people prepare.

A mass free of irritating, tacky, and insulting non-ritual interruptions which break the ritual flow is the very purpose of the mass folders or hymn boards.

Is it necessary to announce the hymn if everything is in the worship aid?

At our parish all the music is indicated in the worship aid (hymnal citations for hymns and the Mass Ordinary, translations of motets, etc.), but the pastor insists that the hymns be announced anyway. From what I can tell up in the loft, we may have a bit more congregational singing on the hymns than on the Mass parts, so perhaps the announcements have the desired effect of encouraging congregants to sing.

A good transition -- at the beginning of Mass, announce that everything is found in the service folder, and that there will be no further announcements.

Once that's got into their bones, dispense with that announcement, too.

We have no announcements and no worship aid. Hymn numbers are on the board. People sing when they want to sing

I don't really recommend practicing before Mass, from experience, but I do think that encouragement from the pulpit or via the bulletin helps.

I will occasionally announce hymns at a funeral. When I do, there is always more participation. The visitors seem to need a little encouragement

Funerals I can understand the hand-holding. I’ve been the cantor for several funerals where the family is either not Catholic or lapsed. Many of them haven’t been to Mass since before the new translation was implemented, so you get some “And also with you”s at the start before they catch on that…things have changed. It’s awkward, but we make the best of it.

My whole thing with announcements during a typical Sunday Mass is it gives some cantors the idea that they need to be animators, as someone pointed out. I’ve seen many parishes where they even ad-lib certain things and try to add little jokes, and it’s just like…stick to the script, please. I’ve not seen this at my home parish but have caught it on many livestreams. It irks me that the role of the cantor has to be this big thing to some people.

Just back from First Communion and a full church including all the school faculty. Not a single voice joined me for 4 verses of "At the Lamb's high feast" in spite of the standard announcement "Please rise as you are able for the procession and lift your voices: hymn number NNN". Next time it'll have to be either a chanted Introit or "Good morning and welcome to St David's. In the pew rack in front of you is a brown Book. Please open it. Turn to number 256. When you look ready the organ will play an introduction. When it pauses briefly, please inhale, and then…"

What happened at the practice, did the school choir sing it with you then?

Richard, if it’s anything like my home parish where the first communicants process in with the ministers, I guarantee most in attendance were looking at the kids and/or taking pictures and paying no mind to the hymn.

I know this may cause an updraft, but I have a paradigm shift for our reflection.

Don’t you feel the pips shouldn’t feel forced to sing or be “forced” to do anything, for that matter, during the Mass?

Isn’t it true that Mother church does not expect sitting, standing or kneeling to happen from everyone at the same time? Is it also not true that some parishes will have different gifts, different strengths, and different resources?

Perhaps this is why over the course of time the expression “to hear Mass” came to be. I would put forward that the modern church has perpetuated the fabricated mode of liturgical homogenization.

Could it be, perhaps, that pips shouldn’t feel guilty If they’re NOT singing? Or that they be looked down upon if OUR expectations as clerics or ministers are not met?

Over the centuries, the church makes room as it knows that people are in different places at different times in their lives. Someone that lost a loved one yesterday isn’t going to want to sing tomorrow. And maybe not a month from now… And maybe not a year from now. (At a minimum, I believe It is expected we stand for the Gospel and perhaps kneel for the consecration.)

Health (or lack of ability to even sing at all) may prevent singing, posture or the so called “actual participation”. In fact, isn’t it true that only the priest is necessary for the Sacrifice as was true in the old law?

Do we perhaps need to reevaluate the balance in liturgical practice?

I think we should remember that "Full, Active, Conscious Participation" does not mean just the external.

We do not announce the hymn, but we do use hymn boards and print the hymn citations (numbers, names, etc) in the Bulletin. We do occasionally use worship aids. We announce hymns for Weddings, and occasionally for funerals (if the family is mostly out-of-towners).

When we stopped announcing hymns, I prepped the pips by reminding them that we should first bring our prayer to God. It is wonderful if that prayer is uniting together in song, but it's also okay if you are praying your own prayers during certain points. (For example: during the offertory (when I'm not working), I offer my prayers and offerings of soul, spirit, mind, and self to God, then (if there is time) I join in song. Same at Communion... I offer my prayers of thanksgiving for what has just been received, and then I sing... I encouraged the people to do the same (without necessarily using myself as the example).

The worst thing we can do is just blindly sing, just because that's what everyone else is doing... There is nothing sacrificial, or active, or conscious, or truly participatory about mindlessly singing a hymn, Antiphon, etc. while we are thinking about what to eat for lunch, or how much longer we have to sit in the pew....

The Council's exhortation is, first and foremost, a sacrifice of self (and a dying of the same) to the worship of God in the most Holy Mass. If one does not have the inner disposition, how can the outward disposition be pleasing to God, even if it results in a beautiful and robustly sung hymn?

That is not to say that if one knows that their inner disposition is lacking, but they offer that as a sacrifice and sing in order to orient themselves to the Mass, that they are of a poor disposition, and can't offer themselves properly... That is an entirely different situation, wherein the person is completely CONSCIOUS of their state and are working to pray, even when the flesh is weak. In this case, by all means, sing every note, whether on pitch, or not, so that you may offer yourself, your apathy, your sloth back to God, that he might impart graces unto you to offer more pleasing worship to Him.

(Still in my first year as a new Catholic from being a LCMS fella.... Be gentle in correction, I'm happy to learn if anything I said is off base....)

fulfill Vatican II’s request for active participation in the Mass. Congregational singing, in a very basic way, is an outside sign of inward reality that “I care enough”.

(Open Updraft)
1. I don’t believe it is the church’s wish to “fulfill V2’s request.”
2. Singing hymns at mass is not a part of tradition.
(Close Updraft)

3. I say all this with the caveat as one who has actually published a hymnal to be used at Mass and is a composer of hymns and chorales. However, it is only for the entrance and recessional, (and possibly a communion meditation for the Novus Ordo.)

NOTE: TLM does not include anything in the vernacular after the Introit or before the Last Gospel.

Singing hymns at mass is not a part of tradition.

broadly speaking, this is true, although there actually are traditions of hymn singing in Germanic countries. I read a fascinating article on JSTOR about music in the wake of the council of Trent, and one of the things it talked about was the long-antecedent practice of hymn singing in place of propers on high holy days as a special treat to the people.

I'm just going to say this once: a flurry of question marks is the least likely way to get me to respond as I have no earthly way of understanding what is confusing or a potential objection.

In any case, it seems fairly self-evident that taking away exterior forms and disciplines (Friday abstinence) that marked Catholics as Catholic and reminded people of the truth went away and so there was nothing to stop the flood.

Humanae Vitae was a huge non-liturgical/formal factor, too. The advent of the Pill before the council quickly created a division in confessional praxis and what might be called a "revolution of changing expecations", before any liturgical changes. My own mother, among others, not contracepting but aware of lines of wives (almost always the wives, my mother mordantly noted; the husbands largely didn't treat it as confessional matter because the wives were taking the Pill albeit typically with their husbands' cooperation, as it were) in line for the "pastoral" confessors, as it were.

Not my phrase francis,
but I note that Cardinal Heenan warned after a demonstration of the new Missa Normativa, that while in England Catholic men attended Sunday Mass in good numbers it was mostly Low Mass, and that any attempt to 'embellish' it with singing would drive them away.

I just think that when you clearly seem to be not as serious — even if you strenuously object to the notion that “we no longer believe that” — and when there are fewer physical reminders of truth, like genuflecting or kneeling and signs of the cross, people quit. I have heard a lot of stories about average people (mostly men in their twenties but not only) who have typical problems were like “what is this?” and saw such a sharp contrast they walked out and would profess the Creed if pushed — there’s only one game in town — but are so damaged that they won’t darken a Catholic church again.

while in England Catholic men attended Sunday Mass in good numbers it was mostly Low Mass, and that any attempt to 'embellish' it with singing would drive them away.

Colin Mawby gave a talk to us on this very topic, some context. The good Cardinal was accustomed to stand at the back of the various churches in the City of London. He noticed that not only the presence of many men, but that most of them gave up their breakfast or lunch break to attend Mass. A longer Mass would be impossible for them to attend and get back to work in time.
A Low Mass said in a timely manner is vital to the working man and woman, so they can attend Mass and get to work on time.

@MattewRoth

Thanks for your response