X on the Piano On the medical Anthropology of the Piano Playing the Example of Poems on piano-playing Figures from the second Half of the 18th Century

This article examines whether there is a connection between a type of poem popular in the second half of the 18th century describing people playing the piano and the new physiological concepts of the so-called reasonable physicians from Halle, who conceived of the human nervous system as being analogous to a stringed instrument. It will be argued, however, that a closer connection can only be detected in a poem by Friedrich Schiller.