Meaningful Connections With The Piano

Not long after writing "Learning How Music Works in The Jungle", a video popped up in my youtube feed. It was about Franz Mohr, a German piano technician and his relationship with God.

Him and his family were on the receiving end of the Americans military might in WWII. His village was carpet bombed and he experienced hell on earth. In the midst of destruction his mother cried out to God for protection. He told her to shut up, there is no God. How can he allow something like this to happen to us?

Fleeing from his house to escape, he witnessed what hell was like. Homes ablaze and people on fire like "human torches", he described. He escaped to a nearby village that had been spared by the Americans.

He eventually ran back into his family in the other village. They returned to the ruins of his home. Nothing left but remnants of buildings and charred bodies.

They began to collect the body parts in bags and giving them a proper grave. As they where doing this, we marched by, the Americans. Marching by, saying nothing.

His heart blazed with a raging fire that no ordinance could ever match. He was angry at his reality and with God.

He came across some people worshiping and a preacher said to him, I see an anger in your heart. The only one who can extinguish it is Jesus Christ. He was handed a bible and prayed for.

After losing his brother, he spiraled into a confusion. As a last resort, he turned to the bible to just see what happens.

It was the story of Cain and Abel that rocked him. He said "Here is the first family coming from the hands of God onto this earth. It is man who is responsible for all this, not God" A great weight was lifted from him and he knew that God was real. Thank you Jesus, Thank you Jesus, Thank you Jesus."

"Earth is given to us and we the stewards of it" - Franz Mohr

Sometime later he suffered from an inflammation of the wrist which inhibited his violin playing. He gave up his vision of being a performer and had been given something far more powerful than that. He became a piano craftsman.

He felt this work was given to him by God.

"I've heard people say they have perfect pitch. Thaey are all wrong. They can't tell weather a note is in 440Hz, 433Hz, etc. We have to have a reference point, a tuning fork.

That is what the bible is. A reference point. Without it you are lost." - Franz Mohr

It turned out he was Vladimir Horowitz's personal technician. He would travel with him to prepare his piano for concerts. Horowitz was serious when it came to his piano. His standards for is instrument could only be achieved by someone like Mohr.

Another connection was made. I almost cried again.

I felt deeply that the reason that the Moscow performance had such a deep effect on me was because Mohr tuned that piano and his work is inspired by the divine. And I too stumbled into the craft of being a piano technician. This also comes at a time where I am experiencing the blessings as I struggle surrendering myself to the all that is. I don't really like using the word God. We use it to describe incomprehensible, in untouchable, in conceivable, that all that is. We fight each other over the definition of three letters and no one can ever or has ever been able to capture the full glory and power in words. Our primitive, infantile words.

Franz Mohr - finding reference point with a tuning fork.

Hearing this mans story, seeing my country lay waste to innocent lives to just clear a passage, all in the name of freedom. The fire from this war burned inside me as well and made me angry. It was my country who did that because the boogey man was going to take over the world. The Germans called us Marines "Tufel Hunden", Hounds from Hell. We are relentless, you cannot stop us, and are trained to take souls off this earth. All in the name of "freedom". I felt connected to Mohrs story but in a detestable kind of way; being connected to the military that destroyed his home. But I also felt something else about his story, something transcendent. I felt something shift inside of me, somewhere. It felt as if I was being pulled into different timelines and I was feeling the stretch.

The music and the piano bridged the connection to something bigger than the tragedies of war. Something sacred. And between two people from different walks of life.

Then I realized that a week prior, I was getting my schedule ready for the fall semester. It was a choice between taking introduction to German or Portuguese. I lived Brasil for year and remembered a little but I also have a friend that lives in Germany, Chris Jarrett. I want visit him one day so I figured I'd take German.

Then I found this documentary, which had connections to other prior experiences that I wrote about.

These are the things I enjoy writing about. Most of the time they are beyond explanation and I don't know what they all mean but I do my best to write about them. I hope that the excitement of these stories help you see the sparkles in your life too.

Peace be with you,

The perfect pitch - Franz Mohr's experiences with God

Stay Real,

Louis San Miguel