Visits Paid to the ‘Imaginary Museum of Musical Works’: David Lynch and the Musical Canon

This chapter focuses on musical works from the Western canon (‘serious music’ as one could put it, following Adorno), as they were used in the films by David Lynch. It argues that even though Lynch chooses his sounds and music from a wider variety of sources, he also goes back to Western art music. This chapter taggles the musicological conversations that exist between Lynch’s films and the musical canon. It proposes a motif essential to Lynch’s films, one that is about the realm between the physical and the metaphysical. By way of his vision and his musical choices David Lynch raises questions about the entanglements and limitations of these realms.