The study analyzes from an aesthetic and a hermeneutical point of view three music pieces expressing sorrow and paint. The first is the memorable passage of J. S. Bach’s St. John Passion reproducing Christ’s last sorrowful words – es ist vollbracht, the second, the Andante doloroso of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 31. in A-flat major, Op. 110, and the third the final movement of Tchaikovsky’s sixth and last symphony, the SymphonyPathétique.
In all three the intercategorial reflections place us into states of our emotionally experienced existence such as the forms of sorrow, loss, trials sometimes heightened to the extent of paroxysm. In the aesthetic approach of these compositions we find the numerous versions of fear, anxiety, fright, and in these always resounds the Aristotelian memento of fear and pity.
