Lisztomania is a term that describes the hysteria fans would demonstrate at the performances of Franz Liszt, an internationally famous 19th-century pianist.
A more modern comparison is “Beatlemania” of the 1960’s. The English rock quartet actually stopped touring in the midst of the madness because screaming fans would drown out their performances, causing the shows to become less and less about the music.
However, in The Virtuoso Lizst, musicoligist Dana Goodley argues the difference between the manias of Liszt and The Beatles:
The word “Lisztomania” is used today as a colorful expression to describe the mass public enthusiasm inspired by Liszt. It resonates with echoes of the more familiar word “Beatlemania,” and because we are closer to the 1960s than the 1840s, we might naturally tend to filter our imagination of Liszt’s audiences through our images of Beatles fans. Yet, when the word “Lisztomania” was coined, the medical valences of the term “mania” were still strong, whereas in modern parlance it designates any popular fashion or craze, and scarcely bears a trace of medical discourse. Understanding the medical connotation of the term is more than an exercise in semantics. It is the first step toward defamiliarizing the enthusiasms of Liszt’s audiences and returning our sense of Lisztomania to its historical context.
Too dramatic for Phoenix, who prefer the classical era, hence the album title Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.
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