13:45 Sep 23, 2010 

Here is the relevant Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_(mythology)

However it does not make a reference to ethereal music/music of the spheres and therefore, as I said, I gave up on posting an answer here.

I don't think there is much danger of the fourteen world-wide Ethereal Wave fans getting confused by the ambiguous terminology.

The adjective-form without ae is also correct for enGB (New Oxford Writers Editors)

13:37 Sep 23, 2010 

Ethereal wave, also called ethereal darkwave in Europe and ethereal goth or simply ethereal in the US, is a term that describes a subgenre of Dark Wave music. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereal_Wave

So, I really don't think that covers it. But as Michael mentioned, there is no useful source...

13:00 Sep 23, 2010 

... "ethereal music" is was what I was missing ... this is IMHO the best answer and agree with MW - put it in as an answer opolt.

12:05 Sep 23, 2010 

This also occured to me and I think it is the direct parallel of the German here, but I couldn't get Wikipedia to give me a really clear source and lost interest. Opolt should add this as an answer and not just here in the discussion.

20:52 Sep 22, 2010 

... would be "ethereal music", IMHO; it has the advantage of being associated semantically with "the spheres", through its meaning of "celestial", etc. It also relates to "spirituality", even esoterics, by denoting intangibility. -- Just an idea.

Pls see (an listen!) here for lots of "ethereal music" -- such as "Eerie echoes of unearthly guitars and faraway flutes driven by seductive drums on a steady walk into a future world" :-]] Well, there are those who like this:

http://musicbakery.com/royalty-free-Ethereal-music-downloads...

19:06 Sep 22, 2010 

IMHO ambient music really only means backgound music to create a particular atmosphere. It needs at least to be qualified in some way to describe the required effect. E.g. soothing ambient music or relaxing ...
Or ... just use "soothing music" or "relaxing music" (or even "atmospheric music").