Ongoing History Daily: The riddle of Phoenix and “Lisztomania”
One of Phoenix’s biggest songs is “Lisztomania” from their 2009 album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. But what are they talking about in that song?
It references Franz Liszt, a Hungarian composer who was at his peak in the 1840S. Although we’re talking classical music, he was so big that he’s been called “the world’s first rock star.”
There are stories about how women would fight over his used handkerchiefs and would generally lose their minds wherever he appeared. When Liszt performed in Paris, a literary critic named Heinrich Heine came up with the term “Lisztomania” to describe his frenzied following.
The topic of Franz Liszt at the world’s first rock star comes up every once in a while. In 1975, Roger Daltrey of The Who starred in a Ken Russell film called Lisztomania. It’s pretty surreal and weird, but if you want to go deeper into the story of an unconventional classical music composer, it might be worth your time.
