Originally published at: 19th-century women went nuts for Franz Liszt, music's first celebrity | Boing Boing
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The modern version of the piano owes a lot to his playing style (and vice versa): he popularized a heavier harp frame that made the piano louder, plus it had better action and more control over sustain. We could think of him as much like Eddie Van Halen or Jimi as the Beatles.
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and let’s not forget the movie!
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Is there some banana I’m missing?
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You know it Brother.
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Perhaps the last time a concert pianist really wowed a massive audience… and worldwide, at that:
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Like Rachmaninov, Liszt had massive hands. (I can only straddle a 9th.)
Just don’t get on his shit Liszt.
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I wonder how Vladimir Horowitz would compare? 
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Like Paganini, an physical outlier who set a standard that has given generation after generation since tendon injuries.
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I believe Gottschalkmania might have preceded it, if it indeed existed (I may be misremembering).
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One of the best Phoenix songs
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That’s just an old myth that the size of the person’s hands relates to the size of the pianist.
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I’ve heard the same about Pablo Picasso. He could walk down your street and girls could not resist his stare, and so Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.
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He was an abusive asshole.
But people love his art, so who gives a shit if women suffered.
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That’s nothing, here’s French philosopher Henri Bergson:
He was so popular with the ladies that 700 or more would show up to his lectures (the room could only hold half that).
The literary critic and politician Gaston Deschamps noted that a new trend could be observed in Paris: every day, around five o’clock, ‘We hear the most beautiful women of our century deliciously conversing around small tables about M Henri Bergson, they salute Creative Evolution in their reedy voices, they coo over the wonders of emotional intuition and gloss over the “vital impetus”.’
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Oh no… women liked him. Clearly a sign of his inferiority… /s
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Yeah, his critics were pretty messed up, I think even for the time. Heaven forbid that philosophy should appeal beyond the anointed few.
The attitude persisted. I loved Bergson as a college student, but one of my professors, noticing copy of one of his books under my arm, once carefully explained to me why Bergson wasn’t proper philosophy.
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Did it? gosh. I never would have guessed.
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