Music as Prayer

Thomas H. Troeger studied to become a flutist but under the impact of a great preacher, he decided to prepare for the ministry. A pastor for seven years, he then began teaching homiletics, hymnody, and liturgics. His scholarship has focused on the role of the imagination in preaching and worship, and his creative work includes hymns and lyric poems.

Foreword by Don E. Saliers ; Introduction ; Music and the Making of Meaning ; Music and Metaphor ; When the World Falls Apart ; Salutary Harmonies ; The Great Mighty Ocean Tone ; Plucked from the Universe ; The Deeper Meaning of Inspiring Music ; The Whole Company of Musicians ; Church Organist Declared Greatest Composer ; How Do You Sing Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus? ; To What End Beauty? ; The Materiality of Making Music ; The Stone Age Ancestors of Organists ; Music that Can Never Be Recorded ; The Piece You Thought You Would Never Play ; How Beautiful and Astounding Are the Feet ; The Freedom of Constraint ; Silence as the Prelude to Sound ; The Rhetoric of Breath ; Before the First Note: Getting Centered ; Wrong Notes in a Splendid Performance ; Music and the Landscape of the Soul ; Study Tour of the Human Soul ; Musical Hometown ; An Antidote to Cognitive Imperialism ; The Necessity of Beauty ; Children of Process ; Escaping the Hubris of the Present Moment ; The Perfect Registration ; Music for Facing Temptation and Wild Beasts ; Season of Lament ; Unacknowledged Healing ; Plain and Simple, Rich and Complex ; A Gigue for Everyone to Dance ; Music for the Seasons of Faith ; Waiting as Blessing ; Rehearsing for an Epiphany ; A New Song for Christmas? ; Song that Blesses Earth ; New Year's Resolution: Not Exactly as the Composer Wanted ; Music Born of Resurrection