Some of the first German Romantic writers refer to the intangibility and incorporeality of music as qualities that distinguish it from other arts, arguing that it allows the spirit to access “the pure form of the movement of the heavenly bodies, freed from any object or material” (Schelling, Philosophie der Kunst, 1802/3). This paper explores how Novalis, W. H. Wackenroder, Johann Wilhelm Ritter and E.T.A. Hoffmann reinterpret this assertion: either by saying that music allows human beings to separate themselves from their bodies and thus reach an ethereal and harmonious state; or, on the contrary, by considering music a physical phenomenon that flows within the human body, visibly affecting it and leading to altered states of (self)awareness.

Keywords
Music, body, illness, Novalis, W. H. Wackenroder, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Johann Wilhelm Ritter



Biographical note