History of Music, a new class this year, had all the campers defending their opinions.

True, the first half of the class was about music, but they had listened to different kinds of music and discussed whether they had been listening to actual music. In the class taught by Robyn Brown the campers heard Operas about puppets and a very obscure and unwanted (by the 19 students in the class) “rap” piece off of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. “I think that even though it’s not a great song, it will introduce people to a type of music that they wouldn’t normally listen to. I think that’s essential to keeping music alive,” states Sam Hanks, thinking back to the piece.

Later, they moved from listening to music to talking about music. Or rather, talking about what music was. Robyn put a chart up on the board with two columns: MUSIC and NOISE. Underneath MUSIC and NOISE she put ideas that people called out. Some of the ideas included “pleasing to hear” and “disruptive.” Many people stated their thoughts. Everyone defended their opinion at least once-we had a big debate about what music was.

Finally, the class ended by listening to Beethoven’s Fifth again, but a modified version. It was the actual piece, but it was described by an announcer the whole way through, as though it were a football game. And when the oboe player had that cadenza, the crowd went wild. Is it History of Music… or a music class? Who knows, but everybody had a lot of fun.