ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how religious music actually played out in the communities of Elizabethan England. It also explores the historiographical notion of community and its relation to our understanding of religious practice and change, particularly with respect to music, as well as Elizabethan understandings of the relationship between music and community. The chapter examines the ways in which religious music was actually capable of fashioning religious concord, as well as the ways in which it could breed anger and contention, destroying the very forms of community it aimed to strengthen. Elizabethan religious identities were complex and sensitive constructs, which music sometimes had the power to affect, but not always in a predictable manner. Through the tropes of harmony and discord, this chapter has demonstrated that while music could be a factor in religious integration, its contribution was unstable and unpredictable.
