After dinner, we repaired to the ballroom, where Fripp led seventeen students who were enrolled in his Guitar Craft course. A student of Gurdjieff, Fripp had developed the course on the principles of the philosopher’s method. While most of us labored to make ourselves comfortable on the meager throw pillows, Fripp and his pupils sat in utter silence for what seemed like an eternity. At long last, one of them broke the silence by plucking a single note. In short order, all the rest piled in with a plunk or two of their own. This went on for the next minute or so. Then they stopped.

The room was completely silent. Later, one of my roommates suggested that we had all fallen under the spell of the music.

Some of the players then got up and changed seats. Then, in groups of three or four, they played short pieces that seemed more like conventional songs. The audience remained silent and unsure of itself until Fripp began hooting and beating time on the back of his guitar, at which point a few in the crowd hooted and warily clapped along. Everyone was waiting for more cues from Fripp.

When all the players had taken a turn, Fripp issued his final assignment. “Select a note,’’ he told them, “and then, in silence, establish a relationship with that note. Keep it within you until you can no longer contain it and must give it voice.’’

For an awkwardly long time, all seventeen strained in silence, until one of them just had to give voice to his note. That cracked the dam, and within seconds everyone liberated his note, some of them two or three times. It was as close to a Monty Python experience as one could have without the presence of John Cleese.

After the concert, Fripp again spoke to the group. “What is music?’’ he asked. Predictably, answers were a long time in coming; no one wants to be the first to speak out in class. Also predictably, once the answers started to come, Fripp rejected every one. “Just sound?’’ he questioned. “Just organized sound? I would argue that you could take car horns and organize them according to musical principles of pitch and metre and so forth, and still that would not be music.’’ Life in sound, someone suggested. “That’s not bad, but I would argue that real music’’—his voice now fell to a hush—“from something greater than life itself.’’ Soon it became evident that none of us was going to be able to tell Fripp what music was, so we stopped pitching him softballs and waited for the answer. “Music is quality organized in sound,” he finally said. Before we could ponder that for very long, he one-upped himself. “Music is the cup that holds the wine of silence.’’

I wanted to ask him why silence wasn’t the cup that holds the wine of music, but there was no time; Fripp was talking about how the next day’s activities would help us get in touch with the music within us. “Most of all, this weekend is about fun. Have fun. Enjoy yourselves.’’

He then divided the room into three parts. “I want this section to clap like this,’’ he said, selecting a simple beat. He then assigned the second section a faster pace, and the third a pace faster yet. One by one, he started each section clapping, and then left he the room, accompanied by a sound that was identical to applause.

The next day, I became a musician. But the path was slow, and not without challenges. After breakfast and meditation, the student body was divided into three groups and assigned to workshops. I started with voice. My instructor was a short, sinewy German woman. “We are going to learn a song,’’ she instructed us. “Here is your first line: Ave verum. Repeat!’’

“Ave verum.’’

We did this a couple of times, until she was confident that we had those four syllables down pat, at which point she blew into a pitch pipe and said “Here is your do,” to which we responded “Do re mi.’’

“Do re mi,’’ I sang. Strongly. With my head back and my mouth wide open, just the way every singing coach and choirmaster says you should to do it. And lo and behold, no one intervened. Was that all there was to it? After years of my buddies turning up car radios, after hearing my kids complain about my singing in the shower many rooms away, was the secret just to open my mouth and enclose the wine of silence?

We had worked our way through “Ave Verum Corpus Natum” when the instructor pointed at me.

“You!’’ she said.

“Yup, he’s off,’’ said the singer next to me. All at once, I was transported back to my third-grade class, to the moment when Sister Marie Leone told me to stop singing because I was ruining “Gray Squirrel” for the rest of the class. Given that this was the prime of Catholic parochial-school education during the baby-boom era, ruining something for the whole class was no mean feat. There were one hundred and eight students in that class.

Suddenly, I noticed that Fripp was standing beside her. “He’s all fifths and sevenths,’’ Fripp said with diagnostic dispassion. “Isn’t it interesting how he manages to be off the same way each time?’’

The teacher agreed that I was fascinating. “You!’’ she said to me, and pointed to my neighbor. “Listen to him when he sings. You!’’ she said to my neighbor, “Sing right into his ear!’’ And thus we completed “Ave Verum.”

The subject of the next workshop was the ocarina, a clam-shaped wind instrument perforated by a dozen holes and a mouthpiece. The teacher, a slender fellow in a striped Lacoste knit shirt, was one of Fripp’s guitar students. He told us to choose an ocarina from a box he passed around. Telling us to “get acquainted” with our instruments, he sent us into the field outside, where I learned that if I blew into the mouthpiece I could make the thing toot. After a while, I discovered that if I covered different holes I could make different toots. Brilliant.

“What did we learn about our instruments?’’ the teacher asked when we reconvened and formed a big circle. Pretty confident in the strength of my different holes, different toots discovery, I raised my hand, but the teacher recognized someone else.

“That the ocarina is a highly vocalized instrument very responsive to changes in the vocal chords or wind,’’ the fellow said.

“Very good,’’ the teacher said, then pointed to another pupil, who said, “If you stroke the sides, you can create a slide effect, like a trombone.’’

“Excellent!’’ said the teacher. Then he pointed to me. Suddenly, I realized that my different toots observation was not the breakthrough I once thought. “Yeah, trombone,’’ I offered. “Like the other guy said.’’

“O.K.!’’ the teacher said, and went on. I sighed with relief. I thought my crisis had passed.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,’’ said the teacher. “I’m going to play something.’’ He pointed to the person on his left. “You repeat it, then play something of your own, which the next person will repeat, and then play something new, which the next person will repeat, and so on, all around the circle.’’