Lynch on Music

"I was listening to the radio one day when I was working on the Elephant Man, and I heard Samuel  Barber's Adagio for Strings. I fell in love with this piece for the last scene of the film. I asked Jonathan Sanger, the producer, to get it. And he came back with nine different records. I listened to them and said, 'No, that's not what I heard at all.' All nine were completely wrong. So he went out and bought some more. Finally I heard André Previn's version, and I said, "That's it." It was composed of the same notes as the others, of course, but it was the way he did it.

The music has to marry with the picture and enhance it. You can't just lob something in and think it's gong to work, even if it's one of your all-time favorite songs. That piece of music may have nothing to do with the scene. When it marries, you can feel it. The thing jumps; a 'whole is greater than the sum of the parts' kind of thing can happen."

David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity