IT WAS AMONGST THE DYING WISHES of Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis) in March 1801 to hear his brother play a piece by Mozart on the harpsichord. Mention of any great knowledge or appreciation of music, of specific composers and musical works, and evidence of any practical musical skill are, nevertheless, absent from the corpus of his writing. It is of no slight significance, however, that the conference from which this volume grew should have heralded itself with reference to Novalis's formulation “Unsere Sprache […] muß wieder Gesang werden” (SN3:284:245), which is typical of the many abstract references to song and music strewn throughout his theoretical and literary writings.

This paper will explore Novalis's complex theoretical understanding of music within the context of his own philosophical-aesthetic system, examining its role in co-determining his theories of language and poetic writing, Poësie. In calling for language to become song again, Novalis appears to offer us a prescription for transforming the way in which we as individuals speak and write. In this discussion, however, I will move on to look at other theoretical models of music that had a bearing on Novalis, suggesting that music also plays a vital role in defining a conception of intersubjective discourse. Specifically, the marriage of a Romantic re-reading of the seventeenth-century theosophist Jacob Böhme and his ideas of universal music on the one hand, with Novalis's philosophical dissatisfaction with the egocentrism of Fichtean idealism on the other, allowed the poet to produce a polyphonic model of discourse that is inclusively intersubjective.