The “musical people” of Italy: a nineteenth-century medical question

Music is the soul of these people, their life, their nationality. There are undoubtedly musicians in other countries who enjoy a reputation equal to that of the greatest Italian celebrities, but there is no musical people like this. Music is represented here in Italy not by individuals, but reveals itself in the whole population: music has become the people itself. In Heinrich Heine’s Florentine Nights, these statements emerge from the continuous flow of words and stories with which Maximilie..