"I was busy with music for too long," Masur recalled in an interview last year with the German weekly Der Spiegel. "But when I learned that all of a sudden street musicians were being arrested for wanting to protest peacefully, I realized that change was overdue."

By 1989, Leipzig had become the focal point for the demonstrations that would culminate in the opening of the Berlin Wall and the end of communist rule. As tensions rose on Oct. 9 — and with the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown in China still fresh on people's minds — Masur and five others — a satirist, a cleric and three party officials — issued a public statement calling for calm and promising dialogue.

With security forces massing in the streets and young people saying goodbye to their families as if heading to war, a recording — read by Masur — was broadcast on speakers throughout the city. Without it, he later said "blood would have flowed."

A month later, the embattled East German authorities gave in to popular pressure and opened the country's border with the West. When Germany was reunited on Oct. 3, 1990, Masur directed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at the official celebrations.

Germany's minister of culture, Monika Gruetters, paid tribute Saturday to Masur's musical legacy and his role in the peaceful revolution "when he used his high authority to compel the power of the state to react without violence to the mass demonstrations in Leipzig and begin a dialogue with the citizens."

After German reunification, Masur took charge of the London Philharmonic and the Orchestre National de France, among a slew of engagements that spanned three continents, but spurned the political role that some suggested for him. When his name surfaced during the search for a new German president in the early 1990s, Masur said he wasn't interested.

Born on July 18, 1927, in what was then the German town of Brieg — now Brzeg, Poland — Masur studied piano, composition and conducting at the Music College of Leipzig. He was appointed in 1955 as conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic in East Germany.

Masur subsequently spent 26 years in charge of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, where he successfully petitioned East Germany's Communist leader Erich Honecker for a new concert hall.