In anticipation of the Falk School-Pittsburgh Symphony Beethoven Extravaganza, we took time to listen to, analyze, and respond to Beethoven’s music. We focused primarily upon Symphony No. 6, the “Pastoral Symphony,” and were inspired to create these storm scenes while listening to the “Allegro/The Tempest” movement from this piece of music. You can also view our preliminary explorations of line and color created while listening to this piece.
 

Display of Storm Paintings and Explorations of Line & Color in primary hallway
 

Students Explore Line and Color

Student Quotes:

It’s a total monster storm and there’s a big puddle underneath. The music led me to the colors and how I felt. If I used red I felt really energetic and if I used blue I felt less energetic. If I used warm colors I felt more energetic, if I used cool colors I felt less energetic. If I used black I felt very powerful.
--Emma

The music made me feel like there was a big thunderstorm and then a thunderbolt hit a tree. I made a mistake while painting black around the yellow thunderbolt, and it’s kind of shaped like a person. I thought it would be neat for it to be Zeus disguised as a thunderbolt. I didn’t want the thunderbolt to strike this tree because there’s a bird’s nest right there.
--Alptuğ

It’s lightning happening in the ocean and it’s raining and in the clouds the little white stuff is water vapor and there’s a ship that was sinking.
--Emily

The rain flows from all different directions, making a big wave. Sometimes I see water that’s green so I mixed a bunch of greens and blues and violets.
--Lily

On one side there’s a big tornado sucking a lot of dirt and a tree and a car. There’s a lot of lightning and rain. On the other side, it’s sucking the wave up to become a hurricane. There’s rain coming down from the hurricane. The music sounded like the tornado is going to crash into a lot of houses. And then the hurricane came up from the ocean and it was really close to land. The moisture came into the tornado and made the tornado stronger.
--Jackson

There’s a tornado and there’s land. It’s a big tornado with a thunderstorm. There’s some lightning destroying stuff and the water is sort of getting flooded. The green is sort of bad stuff; it’s polluted because of the tornado.
--Alex