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Writer and music lover Amanda Dalton’s childhood was dominated by her love of playing the piano and loathing of the intensive psychoanalytical psychotherapy she underwent for five years. Coupled with her long personal interest in how the brain and the body work together, this series takes an unusual look at music.

The essays focus on human stories exploring interactions between music and a troubled mind, discussing some of the key historical and current thinking regarding the relationships between creative individuals with mental health challenges or damaged minds - and music. Some of these will be well known, some less so – all afford rich material to explore the themes. Always returning to the human and personal story, the series references the research and insights of neuroscientists and psychologists, such as Daniel Levitin, Oliver Sacks and Anthony Storr. As arguably the birthplace of psycho analysis and home to a multitude of iconic classical musicians – the starting point is Vienna.

Essay 5: Lisztomania: Music, mood and mass hysteria!

This final essay explores the power of music to alter mood and create powerful bodily sensations – to uplift us, make us smile, have us in floods of tears – and to trigger our memories of experiences we had thought we’d long forgotten. It explores the science and continuing mysteries behind how music can generate radically altered psychological states – often more powerfully than drugs and explores the roots and impact of the mass hysteria that accompanies the live appearances of some pop stars including Taylor Swift, the Beatles and – back in the day – Franz Liszt, in a phenomenon dubbed in 1844 by Heinrich Heine as Lisztomania. Music and togetherness, music and love and loss, music as a Proustian conjurer of vivid memory... the essay and the series concludes with a celebration of music’s mind-altering powers.

Amanda Dalton is a playwright, poet and essayist. She has three poetry collections with Bloodaxe Books, most recently Fantastic Voyage (2024). Smith|Doorstop published a pamphlet of two long poems, Notes on Water, a version of which she re-created for two voices and soundscape for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 3’s Between the Ears.
Amanda writes extensively for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 3 and 4 including original drama, poetry-dramas, re-imaginings of silent movies and classic film, lyric essays and adaptations of fiction. Her theatre writing also includes text for outdoor and site-specific performance, and work for young people with commissions from Manchester’s Royal Exchange, Sheffield Theatres and Keswick’s Theatre By The Lake.
Until 2019 she was a senior leader at the Royal Exchange Theatre where she also worked as an Associate Artist, theatre maker and project director, in partnership with communities across the North West and beyond.
Alongside her work as a writer, Amanda designs and delivers a wide range of writing workshops, mentors a number of poets and playwrights, and regularly curates and co-delivers collaborative cross-artform projects, most recently with Wainsgate Dances, Manchester Camerata and Quarantine.
Her website is https://www.amandadalton.co.uk

Writer and reader: Amanda Dalton
Producer: Polly Thomas
Sound: Alisdair McGregor
Exec Producer: Chantal Herbert

A Thomas Carter Project production for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 3