The image of music in the nowhere of future ideal societies was largely oriented from the state novels of the Renaissance to the adventure novel and the Robinsonades of the 18th century based on the respective present. It is only in the utopias and imaginary voyages of the late 18th century that music is extensively reflected upon as an aesthetically independent and historically evolving cultural phenomenon. Above all, there lies the long shadow of a Platonic-Pythagorean conception of music. This leads to the glorification or rejection of everything new becoming another constant in the musical visions of the future, connecting such diverse authors as Verne and Hesse. At the same time, the erosion of a previously somewhat binding musical language in the negative utopias of the 20th century results in very personal forms of understanding music, where music appears as an existentially transformative force, as isochronous art par excellence, as a seemingly permanent cultural preserve. Last but not least, the irreversibly established separation of entertaining from serious music plays a central role in the dystopias of Orwell and especially Huxley, while in Werfel's last novel, music, of any kind, fades into an abstract and merely imagined art form.