A vivid (and startling) example of the "new musicology," Beethoven's Kiss is an interdisciplinary study of romantic pianism in relation to gender and sexuality, ultimately underscoring the extent to which the piano resonates with intimations of both homosexuality and mortality.

The first chapter, on the amateur pianist, scrutinizes the way Andre Gide and Roland Barthes discuss piano playing, their favorite composers - and their homosexuality. Situating these discussions within the histories of sexuality and amateur pianism, the author argues that connections between musical and sexual mastery are shaped by the "performance" of class and gender.

The second chapter examines the homoerotic basis of the creation of nineteenth-century piano music and the equally homoerotic basis of the twentieth-century recreation of this music. The title of the third chapter, "Beethoven's Kiss," refers to the apocryphal story that Beethoven kissed Liszt, then eleven, in public. The author recounts other quasi-sexual myths about nineteenth-century child prodigies, examining how and why these stories used to circulate and why they no longer do so.

The next chapter examines the different ways nineteenth- and twentieth-century audiences sexualize famous pianists and polarize them along gender and sexual lines. The fifth chapter describes the gender, sexual, and class positioning of the "maiden" piano teacher in a variety of texts - interviews, memoirs, short stories, novels, and films.

The book concludes with a far-ranging analysis of Liberace, who (with his silver candelabra) tried to perform upper-class status, who (with his devotion to Chopin) tried to perform highbrow taste, and who (with his closeted lifestyle) tried to perform heterosexuality.