There are many people that think music is a language of its own, believing it has powers to speak emotions which words cannot.
But for one German man who mysteriously turned up at a beach in the UK, this was more than just a principle - it was his only way of communicating with the world.
'Piano Man' Andreas Grassl from Bavaria left authorities baffled back in 2005 when he was discovered on the coast at in Sheerness in Kent without any form of identification or explanation as to how he got there.
Soaking wet in his suit and apparently unable to speak, the then-20-year-old man remained silent for months afterwards, using his musical talents on the piano and drawing skills to communicate with staff at a mental hospital.
He was kept first at Medway Hospital, Kent before being transferred to the Little Brook unit in Dartford, receiving fan mail from the outside world the whole time as his story captured the imaginations of the public.
At the facilities he took to playing music from his favourite classical musicians, such as Mozart, Bach and Schubert, with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata being one of his favourites.
Staff would even give him Beatles songs to play as a present. At other points he appeared to prefer doing sketches, at one point providing a detailed pencil drawing of a piano.
Then, after four months of piano playing and no verbal communication, it was reported a nurse asked him: "Are you going to speak to us today?" to which he replied: "Yes, I think I will."
Speaking to The Mirror himself after his time in hospital back in 2005 he denied accusations of fakery, saying that his experience had been as mystifying to him as it had been for everyone else.
Andreas did say he was able to recollect "little flashes of my past", as if he was "in a film" - but remained clueless as to how he ended up thousands of miles away in England.
His dad Josef revealed that Andreas had been working with disabled people in Saarbrucken on the other side of Germany prior to his disappearance, and had been in regular contact with them before he suddenly vanished.
When Andreas was finally reunited with his family at Munich airport upon discovery of his identity, he embraced them and said simply: "Mir gehts gut" - I am fine.
His disappearance had left his family in great distress, with his emotional father revealing afterwards that he "went to bed every night and woke every morning wondering where he was"
"At one stage I thought it would be better to find out he was dead just to stop me and my wife going through this torture", he said.
But once he was home, his relieved family showed relatively little interest in finding out how he came to be in Kent, instead focusing on spending time with their homecoming son.
They said their son's main theory about his journey was that he took a train from France and then boarded a ferry.
Josef preferred to look on the bright side and even told the Mirror that his son returned from the experience a revitalised man after doctors in England "worked a miracle", saying that he had started to express his feelings and "show his love" after years of difficulty.
"They have given me a new son back. He tells me that he loves me. I cannot put into words how we feel.", he said.
In the 18 years since his identity was uncovered there has even been an independent musical theatre production dedicated to Andreas's story, while a piano bar in Sheerness told local media last year that they planned to invite him back to the town to play.
But Andreas has, perhaps understandably, kept a low profile, with the mysteries of his time as the Piano Man likely to remain forever unsolved.
