ABSTRACT
Given that religion and music are so intimately related, the sociology of religion should relate itself to ‘reception studies’ in music, especially discussions of canonicity as a concept shared by music and religion (and by music itself as a form of religion). In this case study of Handel I relate his reception as a ‘religious composer’ in the Anglo-Saxon world to the impulses of collective participation in Evangelicalism, to the relation of social to musical harmony (a sub-division of the Halevy thesis), to the Austro-German canon (1800-1940) and declarations of independence from it, and the emergence of a humanist Handel from 1960 on.
