# David Lynch of classical music



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Who is the David Lynch of classical music? Of all famous film directors, Lynch is obviously the most musical in his expression. A comparison to music seems apt.

I think it must be a 20th century composer, radical but not avant-garde. Maybe an American but doesn't have to be. Shostakovich seems like a logical choice, but doesn't feel right. There's gotta be someone I'm not thinking of ...


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## KevinW (Nov 21, 2021)

Radical but not avant-garde? How? Maybe Glass is one.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Who is the David Lynch of classical music? Of all famous film directors, Lynch is obviously the most musical in his expression. A comparison to music seems apt.
> 
> I think it must be a 20th century composer, radical but not avant-garde. Maybe an American but doesn't have to be. Shostakovich seems like a logical choice, but doesn't feel right. There's gotta be someone I'm not thinking of ...


Philip Jeck, this for example






Leyland Kirby, like this






I've been thinking a lot about Lynch recently, inspired by reading novels by Patrick Modiano -- in some Modiano novels you don't know whether what is being recounted is supposed to reality or dream. For that reason, the hauntological pieces seemed to me very appropriate -- though they're obviously not "classical" in the sense you may have meant.


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Who is the David Lynch of classical music? Of all famous film directors, Lynch is obviously the most musical in his expression. A comparison to music seems apt.
> 
> I think it must be a 20th century composer, radical but not avant-garde. Maybe an American but doesn't have to be. Shostakovich seems like a logical choice, but doesn't feel right. There's gotta be someone I'm not thinking of ...


Is he? In what films do we see his musical expression?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Olga Neuwirth wrote an opera based on Lost Highway, here's the suite


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

Forster said:


> Is he? In what films do we see his musical expression?


Blue Danube Velvet


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

I'm not very familiar with Lynch (film/Hollywood just doesn't compel me all that much) but from what little I have seen of him, I might opt for Geirr Tveitt






There's that sort of Romantic undercurrent but things can get weird.


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

Mandryka said:


> Olga Neuwirth wrote an opera based on Lost Highway, here's the suite


Oh yeah? ... Petitgirard wrote *The Elephant Man* opera.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Prodromides said:


> Oh yeah? ... Petitgirard wrote *The Elephant Man* opera.


I'm surprised some Frenchman hasn't already decided it would be a stroke of towering genius to write an opera about a mute mime in love with a blind and deaf soprano.


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> I think it must be a 20th century composer, radical but not avant-garde. Maybe an American but doesn't have to be. Shostakovich seems like a logical choice, but doesn't feel right. There's gotta be someone I'm not thinking of ...


John Corigliano can stir up a post-modern _potpourri_ as can Lynch.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

I thought of Corigliano, but no I don't think it works ... Maybe I have not heard enough of him.


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## christomacin (Oct 21, 2017)

Angelo Badalamenti is Lynch's musical alter-ego. There is no need to look any further.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

I think mid-period Schnittke, which was Polystylistic would seem the logical fit. So he gets my vote as being the classical equivalent of David Lynch.


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

Michel van der Aa, and I can't think of any other composer who comes close.

For one thing, many of his recent works involve film, directed by van der Aa himself (he took film courses at the New York Film Academy as part of some program). But the film components aren't just a superficial add ons. They almost seem to inform the music and vice versa in the sense that if you were to take one of the two halves away (the two halves being the music and the film), the piece loses its focus but combined, a narrative emerges. You see this in Lynch's later films like Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive where there are two realities that interact with each other and reference each other but can't achieve full identity (I've seen Lynch's works described as having a "Mobius strip-like" plot, maybe this is what is meant by that). Also, van der Aa in his operas and song cycles explores themes like alienation, anxiety, split personalities, claustrophobia, which you can also kinda see in Lynch.

Here's an example.






This thread is making me want to watch a Lynch movie for Christmas.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

I'll take the last post of the page.

1. A composer vastly changes the previous rules of music yet only minorly effects the output of the music or its quality. The story flows logically but the priorities are switched, the conceptual and the literal
2. David Lynch details his films with hints of the larger context, or what he defines as feelings and impressions. The films flow but its details are related together indirectly; instead of the overall story outlying a lesson or concept secondarily, the lessons work together to build something which can be _identified_ as a story, but where the story doesn't take precidence
3. In effect, Lynch is much more like the Classicist than the Incidentalist, because the themes take precidence, not just the narrative. So where did a composer change the rules to where the narrative was subservient to the ideas?
4. Where might one make sacrifice in traditional quality, to underline his ideals about filmmaking and stories itself?

Beethoven only seems to scratch nearer to David Lynch's school than other composers did.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

christomacin said:


> Angelo Badalamenti is Lynch's musical alter-ego. There is no need to look any further.


One word: Unsatisfactory


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Neo Romanza said:


> I think mid-period Schnittke, which was Polystylistic would seem the logical fit. So he gets my vote as being the classical equivalent of David Lynch.


Ah I think it was Schnittke whom I was struggling to think of in the OP. Thank you very much!


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Schoenberg……………


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Cage or Feldman.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Since David Lynch enjoys a certain amount of popular success, while also retaining a modicum of "outside the mainstream" sense, it is hard to think of a composer with the same positioning.

But I might suggest *Shostakovich* whose symphonies were a commentary on Stalin's oppression and sarcastic response to Stalin's oversized positive image of himself. And Shostakovich was popular among the Soviet people, especially for those aspects which displayed resistance and resilience.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> Feldman.


Yes, Inland Empire is the For Philip Guston of film.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> Feldman.


Yes, Inland Empire is the For Philip Guston of film. Long and self indulgent.


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

SanAntone said:


> Since David Lynch enjoys a certain amount of popular success, while also retaining a modicum of "outside the mainstream" sense, it is hard to think of a composer with the same positioning.


Juxtapositioning the contrasts between the 'popular' and 'outside the mainstream' could lead to Charles Ives.
Perhaps one could state that David Lynch films are cinematic equivalents to the music of Charles Ives?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Found it - Jonathan Harvey


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## thejewk (Sep 13, 2020)

I think to match Lynch you would have to have a composer equally capable of creating feelings of great optimism, joy and wonder followed closely by feelings of gut wrenching dread, both present at the same time somehow.


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## Marc (Jun 15, 2007)

Mandryka said:


> Yes, Inland Empire is the For Philip Guston of film. Long and self indulgent.


Even if that were true, as long as there are people who can appreciate and even love it, I don't see any problem with that.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I agree that Charles Ives is probably the closest thing musically to Lynch I can think of. The suggestion of Shostakovich on one hand feels wrong to me, on the other hand I did read that Lynch found himself inspired by something in the music of Shostakovich's 15 symphony and was listening to it on repeat while writing the script for _Blue Velvet_.


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