What would classical music look like as a painting? This Hilton Head student knows
To Hilton Head’s Alex Gentemann, the booming cannons and triumphant horns of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” look like large whorls of dark red paint, layered over a chaotic background of primary colors.
The finale of Gioachino Rossini’s “William Tell Overture” looks like a swirling meadow of green and gold, with dabs of powder blue and red popping out on top.
And vocal fry looks like TV static or sand — the more a person has, the grittier their voice looks.
Gentemann has synesthesia, a condition in which one sense activates another. For the 18-year-old, hearing activates his sight — he can see songs and even voices in abstract color and texture.
The condition only affects between 3 to 5% of the world’s population, according to Psychology Today. But Gentemann didn’t realize the colors he’s experienced his whole life are unique until recently.
“Just a couple of years ago, I was talking to my parents and I remember bringing it up, like ‘this song, this part of it sounds purple,’” he said. “And my mom said, ‘What do you mean it sounds purple?’”
He explained: Different notes have different colors and textures, and when they’re layered on top of each other, the visuals can combine.
“And my mom was like, ‘No, I think that’s just you,’” he said, laughing.
Gentemann has been painting and drawing since childhood. When he was a middle school student there, Sea Pines Montessori Academy commissioned him to make paintings to raise money for their arts programs. That’s when he realized “people really like the work I put out — they’re not just saying it as compliments.”
He applied to South Carolina’s Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities as a sophomore at Hilton Head Island High School.
For the past two years, Gentemann has lived at the school’s Greenville campus, learning alongside other top-notch student artists and competing to be “the best of the best.”
For his senior concentration project — the equivalent of a thesis for the high school — he created paintings of famous pieces of classical music, attempting to make his condition accessible to a wider audience. The “last-minute idea” is one of the first times that he’s attempted to incorporate his condition into his artwork, he said.
“A big part of what we try to do here is help students find their artistic voice,” said Christina Vandiver, the school’s spokesperson. “I think just by Alex discovering how to use his synesthesia in his art — that’s personal growth there.”
Gentemann said he chose classical music for the paintings because it’s his favorite genre to see.
“My parents did that thing where you make your baby listen to classical music to make them smart,” he said. “Then I continued to listen to classical music because I liked the way it sounded and most importantly liked the way it looked.”
Classical music, he said, has more instruments and layers than most modern music, which looks more minimalist to him.
Toward the end of the project, he began relying on his canvas to portray the texture of the music to the audience — for a painting of George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah,” he painted on paper to capture the gritty sound of the organ.
Gentemann’s teachers loved the project. They loved it so much that one teacher asked him to donate his “Messiah” painting to the school’s permanent collection, which he agreed to — “it’s six feet (tall) and an absolute pain to haul away after graduation.”
The other paintings will accompany Gentemann home when he graduates on Friday. He’s won a scholarship to begin studying animation and painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design in the fall, where he hopes to learn how to survive as a working artist.
Gentemann is inspired by the golden age of Disney animation, and wants to create work inspired by Disney’s “Fantasia,” a collection of short animations inspired by iconic pieces of music.
“Since that was such a big part of my childhood, I feel like I’d like to honor it in that way by going into the field,” he said. “Maybe one day creating a more abstract version of Fantasia would be a goal of mine.”
This story was originally published May 27, 2021 at 4:30 AM with the headline "What would classical music look like as a painting? This Hilton Head student knows."