An account of how the flowering of the European Enlightenment, two World Wars, and the Holocaust can be remembered through the poignant works of music created in their wake. "Eichler shows how four towering composers--Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Benjamin Britten--lived through the era of the Second World War and the Holocaust and later transformed their experiences into deeply moving, transcendent works of music, scores that echo lost time"--Publisher description.