The German critic Heinrich Heine, who coined the term “Lisztomania,” further explained in a review of the 1844 Parisian concert season just how much effect the charming musician had on his audience.

“And yet, how convulsively his mere appearance affected them!” Heine wrote. “How boisterous was the applause which rang to meet him! … What acclaim it was! A veritable insanity, one unheard of in the annals of furor.”

Germany had gone gaga for Liszt. But why? Such madness is rarely pointed towards classical musicians. (Beethoven’s signature scowl and Chopin’s soporific nocturnes couldn’t quite match Liszt’s level of charisma and charm.) Even rockers haven’t experienced this kind of mania save for perhaps Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger, Elvis, or perhaps, One Direction’s Harry Styles (who has caught his fair share of female undergarments on stage). Yet Liszt has always held a special place as the first musician to inspire serious feminine adulation.

“He was a terrific showman, had very theatrical gifts, and he was an exaggerative, demonstrative player who was also a fabulous improviser,” says Leon Botstein, music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra. “Arguably, he was the greatest pianist in history.”

It was this excellence in his craft—what the ancient Greeks would call arête—that perhaps most motivated Germany’s Lisztomania. From an evolutionary standpoint, Liszt had made himself appear to be an incredible mate.

“When you’re able to display that you have the time and resources to perfect your ability, then that ends up being attractive to a potential mate,” said Petr Janata, an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, who specializes in the neuroscience of music. The thinking is that “if you can take care of yourself and learn a skill like music, then you can likely take care of a mate. With bird songs, for instance, there’s a pretty clear link between the quality and complexity of the song and reproductive fitness.”

Charles Darwin hypothesized that musical skill led to better mating options not just for birds but for humans, as well. “Musical notes and rhythm,” he wrote in The Descent of Man, “were first acquired by the male and female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex.”

For over 140 years, research had not been able to verify Darwin’s theory, that is until a recent study conducted by Benjamin D. Charlton confirmed that indeed, “music is a product of sexual selection through mate choice.”

But the findings come with some nuance.

Charlton and his fellow researchers at the University of Sussex found that women in the middle of their menstrual cycle—at their most fertile—tended to believe men with strong musical abilities carried better genes than men without that skill and thus preferred them as mates. For the study, 1,465 women listened to four different piano compositions of increasing levels of complexity and were asked which composer they desired most.