" Martin will recall this night as the first time--and one of the only times--he ever saw Germans crying in public, not at the news of a dead loved one or at the sight of their bombed home, and not in physical pain, but from spontaneous emotion. For this brief time, they were not hiding from one another, wearing their masks of cold and practical detachment. The music stirred the hardened sediment of their memory, chafed against layers of horror and shame, and offered a rare solace in their shared anger, grief, and guilt...The walk home was magical. No one was glum. For this Christmas night they were lifted from the damning particularities of their own lives and invited to be a small piece of eternity.

Years later, as a professor, Martin would try to find the words to articulate the power of togetherness in a world where togetherness had been corrupted--and to explore the effect of the music, the surprising lengths the people had gone to hear it and to play it, as evidence that music, and art in general, are basic requirements of the human soul. Not a luxury but a compulsion. "

― Jessica Shattuck