Jonathan wrote:

>I believe that Wagner achieved the first orgasm in music with his Liebestod

This reminds me of an incident from grad school days in NY.  A young lady
of my acquaintence had just come back from a performance of Tristan at the
Met and I asked her what it was like.  She said,"three and a half hours of
foreplay before the climax was too much!"

I find the "love music" of Act II to be very erotic and sometimes wonder
if monitoring brain waves and/or heart beats during the act of love would
reveal wave patterns similar to those in the music.

That said, I think the eroticism in music is closely tied to our personal
associations.  It may be that music that was playing at the time of a
particularly passionate moment in the past will always be associated with
that moment, and hence passion, for years afterwards.  This same effect
works in non-erotic ways, of course.  Film and music associations are
particularly powerful here: I doubt anyone who saw "Apocalypse Now" with
the Ride of the Valkyries accompanying the helicopters of doom will think
of this theme erotically again.  And,if I recall correctly, there's an
episode of Mash in which Charles brides the gap of understanding with some
North Korean POWS by playing the Mozart clarinet quintet, specifically the
sublime slow movement, only to have the Koreans killed (off-screen) insome
accident.  It's hard not to recall that poignant scene when listening to
the piece today.

Let me finish by adding an aside to the thread on pianists' hands.  From
a long ago BBC comedy show, Take It From Here came this dialogue:

She: Oh Raffles, your hands with those long slim fingers.  They should
be on a woman.

He: That can be arranged.

QED

Eric