This book establishes theomusicology as a valid research approach to studying world religious, mythological, and ethical beliefs via music. Spencer divides his work into two parts. Part one, The Domain of Theomusicology, functions as a methodological exposition to Part Two. It defines the meaning of and suggested method for theomusicology and delineates the theomusicologist's best and broadest possible perspective on the world. Part Two, The Discourses of Theomusicology, illustrates how theomusicology combines dialogue with different disciplines as well as a gamut of historical epochs and movements.

Theomusicology is musicology as a theologically informed discipline. This theologically informed musicology, which especially borrows thought and method from anthropology, sociology, psychology, and philosophy, has as its subject the myriad cultural worlds of ethical, religious, and mythological belief. Theomusicology's researches into cultural and intercultural reflections on the ethical, the religious, and the mythological involves the study of music created, performed, and listened to in the domain or communities of the sacred (the religious), the secular (the theistic unreligious), and the profane (the atheistic irreligious). By examining the depths of sacrality, secularity, and profanity in the music of civilization's many cultures, the theomusicologist can increasingly discern how particular peoples perceive the universal mysteries that circumscribe their mortal existence and how the ethics, theologies, and mythologies to which they subscribe shape their worlds and the world.

To accomplish my goal of giving an introduction to theomusicology, I have divided this book into two parts: Part One, "The Domain of Theomusicology," and Part Two, "The Discourses of Theomusicology." Part One (chapters 1 through 3) functions as a methodological exposition to Part Two. It defines the meaning of, and suggested method for, theomusicology and delineates what I consider to be the theomusicologist's best and broadest possible perspective on the world. Chapter 1 . . .