[321] The phenomenon of double symbolization^a: -- You have the holy legend, the story of [the] Passion^b, of Jesus as the Christ. It is a ritual legend with, [like] all legend, a strong historical foundation, but with characteristics in which the religious symbols are always present---the symbol of the Christ, of the Son of Man itself, the symbols of death and resurrection, the symbols of representative suffering, etc. This is one realm of symbols. Now in the Passion of Matthew by Bach^c, you have all this used, but it is used by another sphere of symbols, namely by musical^d symbols: sounds, rhythms, melodies. So when you go to a concert, in a church, where the Passion of Matthew is performed, then you are in a rather dialectical situation---whether you know it or not, and whether you would call it

so or not. On the one hand, you have the central Christian symbols; on the other, you have great music of the Baroque, i.e., a special style of mysical [sic.] symbolization. Two things can happen to you, in this situation. The one thing is that you listen to the performance and are grasped by the power of Bach^e's music and that you judge whether the performance is good or bad, i.e., adequate to the musical demands or not. This is the aesthetic experience many people have who go to religious music. But when the churches started to ask people to come into the churches, when Bach^f's Passion or

others were performed, then another idea was behind them: they wanted at the same time to mediate the religious power of the RELIGIOUS symbols,^g which appear doubly symbolized in the MUSICAL symbols. And the question in every visitor is always: do you listen in terms of your ultimate concern and DISregard the aesthetic form?---or do you listen in terms of an aesthetic judge who perhaps has