ABSTRACT
Johann Sebastian Bach's declaration that music's sole purpose was for the glory of God alone tasks music with a sublime vocation. The idea that Bach's sacred music has a distinctively religious character that sets it apart from his secular works immediately raises the question as to how musical expressions of the sacred and secular differ. The feeling of height, that in the region of religious aesthetics takes hold in the feeling of the sublime, countermands the temptation to possess the absolute. The St. Matthew Passion's religious ethos and kerygmatic significance clearly fit the liturgical intent of the church's penitential commemoration of Christ's suffering and death in anticipation of the Easter event. Placing the tragic dimension of life's misfortunes under the sign of eternity as evidenced in Bach's music marks out the region of the aesthetic in which Bach's music converges with religious feelings. This chapter considers how eternity functions as a limit-condition with respect to time's ultimate unrepresentability.
