Diverse Strains: Music and Religion in Dickens's Edwin Drood

Music in Dickens's final and unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, shares in the lethargy affecting traditional English community. That life has become stagnant in Cloisterham, the ancient city in which the novel is set, is nowhere more evident than in the desultory choral worship offered in its cathedral. Yet the unevenness of Dickens's writing in Edwin Drood does not make for consistency, and discrepancies in plotting extend to the musical occupations of its protagonists. By considering Edwin Drood alongside the shifting fortunes of choral music in Victorian Britain, this article focuses on what such discrepancies reveal about Dickens's notion of the place of religion in social renewal. Habitual forms of life in Cloisterham, such as the choral service of its cathedral, are being overwhelmed by marginal presences, arriving from the imperial East, but they may also give voice to a future revival. Something of the changeability in Dickens's feeling for established religion can be glimpsed in this duality.