William Kinderman's research interests center on 18th- to early 20th-century music, especially Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Wagner, and Mahler. In addition to his doctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley, he studied philosophy at the University of Vienna, piano and music theory at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, and music history at Yale University.

His books include Beethoven's Diabelli Variations (1987), ed., Beethoven's Compositional Process (1991), Beethoven (1995), ed., The Second Practice of Nineteenth-Century Tonality (1996), Artaria 195: Beethoven's Sketchbook for the 'Missa solemnis' and the Piano Sonata in E Major, Opus 109 (3 vols., 2003), ed. (with Katherine Syer) A Companion to Wagner's 'Parsifal' (2005), ed., The String Quartets of Beethoven (2006), Mozart's Piano Music (2006), ed. (with Joseph E. Jones) Genetic Criticism and The Creative Process (2009), The Creative Process in Music from Mozart to Kurtág (2012), and Wagner’s Parsifal (2013). Kinderman’s comprehensive study Beethoven appeared in an expanded edition in 2009 with Oxford University Press and is being translated into Chinese. Professor Kinderman has written about 60 articles and chapters for scholarly publications, including Acta Musicologica, Journal of the American Musicology Society, 19th Century Music, Journal of Musicology, Early Music, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, Bach Perspectives, Beethoven Forum, Bonner Beethoven-Studien, Beethoven-Handbuch, Brahms: Interpretationen seiner Werke, Chopin Studies, Schubert: Perspektiven, Wagnerspectrum, Wagner-Handbuch, Cambridge Wagner Encyclopaedia, Genesis, Quodlibet, Journal of Musicological Research, and Musical Quarterly. He is guest editor of a special double issue of the Journal of Musicological Research devoted to “New Beethoven Research” to appear in 2013. His research has been recognized through numerous major awards. Professor Kinderman’s recordings of Beethoven’s piano works for Hyperion/Helios and Arietta Records have received critical acclaim.

Pianist Alfred Brendel has called Professor Kinderman a "very rare bird" because of his ability to combine scholarship and performance. He has served in juries of international piano competitions, and Professor Kinderman has taught extensively at the University of Victoria and at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin, is an associated professor at the Aula de musica in Alcal·, Spain, and serves as the editorial chair of the journal Arietta. He is editor-in-chief of the Beethoven Sketchbook Project published by the University of Illinois Press, and has published research on the manuscripts and creative processes of several major composers. Kinderman often holds a seminar on Wagnerís works together with Dr. Katherine Syer at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany. 

During 2007 his recording of Beethoven's "Diabelli" Variations was reissued on the Arietta label as a double CD including a lecture recital. His performances of the "Diabelli" Variations in 2008 included Munich (Residenz), Vienna (Eroica-Saal), Bonn (Beethoven-Haus), and other cities in Europe and America. His comprehensive book Beethoven was issued in an expanded edition in 2009 by Oxford University Press. Kinderman spent the 2007-08 year in Munich with research support from the German Academic Exchange Service and held lectures and seminars at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. During the 2009-10 academic year he returns to Munich as DAAD Visiting Professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University and as recipient of a Research Prize for lifetime achievement from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. 

His writings on music have been chosen by musicians such as Daniel Barenboim, Alfred Brendel, Andras Schiff, and Mitsuko Uchida to accompany concert cycles and recordings. The award-winning 2009 Broadway play "33 Variations" by Moisès Kaufman, and starring Jane Fonda, drew substantially on his work.

Teaching Philosophy 
I believe in the integration of teaching with performance and research. Historical and analytical studies serve not merely as objects for their own sake, but as springboards for deeper understanding of the musical experience. A classic aesthetic idea endorsed by Schiller and Beethoven holds that art brings together the thinking and the feeling sides of human experience, creating a synthesis of the rational and sensuous. This heightened awareness reminds us of our precious but vulnerable humanity, and of the role of music as a communication that reaches beyond mere concepts or inarticulate feeling to embrace our whole being.