Was Liszt the sexiest composer of all time?

What composer had the most rock-star magnetism in the classical canon? One writer says that it's got to be Franz Liszt, a virtuoso whose heyday made crowds swoon.

In a new essay for the Pitchfork Review (the full version is available only in print, not online), University of Massachusetts professor Marianna Ritchey argues that Liszt was the epitome of Romantic—in more ways than one.

When it comes to the kind of gleaming, bare-chested, transcendently joyous, narcissistically macho sex appeal we associate with the true rock stars of the '60s and '70s—your Daltreys, your Plants—the only real precursor is Liszt.

Ritchey dismisses other likely contenders' claims (she imagines Beethoven "reeking of beer and sausages and falling asleep on top of oneself mid-coitus"), and notes that though Liszt learned the virtue of virtuosity from Paganini, as a young performer he steered away from that violinist's freaky sensationalism for a more sexually alluring image.

He played to his audiences, giving them what they wanted to see: a guy blisteringly shredding on the piano, making it seem like the notes were spontaneously pouring from him [...] his eyes closed, his thoughts directed inward, his superior sensitivity finding its authentic expression only within his own being, etc.—But then he'd do stuff like erotically peel off a glove and hurl it into the audience while women shrieked and tore at their bosoms.

In later life, of course, Liszt calmed down and focused on, notes Ritchey, "the more cerebral pursuits" of composing and mastering early modern musical techniques. History now remembers Liszt as a top-notch composer—but in his day, there were many sighing Parisians who remembered him as a hunky heartbreaker.

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