Composer Djawadi hides Easter eggs in ‘Thrones’ music
This story contains spoilers.
“Game of Thrones” composer Ramin Djawadi has a confession:
“To be honest, I still haven’t read the books,” he said in a recent phone interview from his home in Los Angeles.
That hasn’t stopped him from creating an Emmy award-winning musical soundscape that is as inseparable from the franchise as George R.R. Martin’s texts. Mr. Djawadi has scored all eight seasons of the HBO blockbuster series, which culminates in Sunday’s finale episode.
The show’s music is iconic and sprawling, but Mr. Djawadi took care with each note to ensure that the score served the story. The result of his labor is an intricate web of character melodies and themes — “motifs” — that are built up, woven together and dismantled according to the rise and fall of the now famous houses.
For example the Starks have a noble melancholic tune. The Lannisters can boast a doggedly heart-wrenching refrain. House Targaryen’s tune is more hopeful and uplifting.
There are dozens of musical cues such as these that help viewers remember characters, motivations and plot points. And if you think the show’s plot is complicated, just wait until Mr. Djawadi explains some of the techniques he used to score:
“Take the conspiracy theme,” Mr. Djawadi said. “It’s not one of the big house themes. It’s a theme that we
established in the first season as a sort of general tune. Whenever a character was stabbing someone in the back, or when it was just a plot that was evolving where something was discovered or there was a secret that someone wasn’t supposed to know, and over time it developed into the Littlefinger [Petyr Baelish] theme because many times he was actually the guy behind it all. So it turned into his theme.”
Looking retrospectively, that tune helps foreshadow some of the show’s early twists by that infamous schemer. The composer also pointed to the theme for the Bolton family, explaining that the tune is very similar to the Starks’ melody but that the notes generally descend rather than ascend.
“I wanted the melody to basically be the opposite of the Starks to contrast the families,” Mr. Djawadi said.
Mr. Djawadi, 45, is a German-Iranian composer whose credits also include scoring the HBO series “Westworld,” the first “Iron Man” film and “Pacific Rim.” He started learning the organ at age 4 and later switched to guitar.
He said that growing up in Germany, he was steeped in classical music and began learning about counterpoint (writing two or more melodies in a way that fits together) and canons from kindergarten.
“I feel very German when I say this: Counterpoint is always a big part of what I write,” Mr. Djawadi said. “When characters or themes overlap, when I combine them, and sometimes within a theme there might be counterpoint where the melody and the accompaniment are two separate themes, and when you play them on their own. The bass line, for example, might be recognizable as a tune on its own even without the melody.”
Other classical idioms and forms like leitmotifs — an operatic tradition of associating characters, places or events with specific musical ideas — also lend themselves well to developing music for long-form television shows. It can also be useful to think of the way a film composer manipulates a character’s theme, like the Stark theme in “Game of Thrones,” like a set of variations on a theme, another traditional musical technique.
Mr. Djawadi said he tried to create a unique, distinctly “Game of Thrones” sort of sound for the show. He laughed about the wellknown “no flutes” rule that the show-runners insisted on to give the music a different feel than other medieval series.
“They told me, ‘Feel free to be contemporary,’ and I did,” he said. “I use synthesizers in an organic way, and I avoided falling into
techniques that people might expect for a medieval-type show. There are dragons and zombies; it’s really more of a fantasy world. In ‘Game of Thrones’ you get to work with existing tunes over eight seasons, that’s really where you can sink your teeth into it and see where the story takes you. It’s been quite a journey of emotional ups and downs. It’s been incredible.”
He continued: “We decided that the cello was going to be our main instrument given its dark sound and expressive range. And it all started off small. There were no big epic battle scenes in the first season. We started with small melodies, but I made sure the melodies I used could go big, could go epic. I knew that eventually we would go much larger scale musically.”
The dragon tune provides a perfect example of a tune starting small in season one and later opening up into an epic orchestral treatment, much in the way the dragons physically grow and become more pivotal in the plot as the show progresses.
As composer, Mr. Djawadi had some broad advance knowledge of the plot that helped him embed musical ideas or “Easter eggs” into the score, much like the conspiracy/Littlefinger or Bolton/Stark tune relationships. He also cited the relationship between the music of the character Stannis Baratheon and Melisandre as evidence of this.
“These two get introduced at the same time, and Melisandre is such a strong influence on Stannis,” Mr. Djawadi said. “Over the course of the show they become almost interchangeable. And when Stannis dies you realize it’s more Melisandre’s theme to begin with, and it carries on with her.”
Season eight is revisiting much of Mr. Djawadi’s older music with a new spin. During the season premiere, there’s a very close callback to the “King’s Arrival” of season one. However, using counterpoint, Mr. Djawadi also embedded the music of the Unsullied army into the tune to reflect that particular plot development.
“Everybody has different music knowledge,” he said. “Over the years I’ve seen people calling out very specific things, down to ‘Oh wait, these two pieces are in the same key or the same tempo, what does it mean?’ There are people who really dissect the music, and that’s incredible to see.
“But also the people who don’t have that musical knowledge — I hope and see that people still subconsciously pick up on the emotion and certain repeated themes. Even if they can’t exactly put their finger on what’s happening, they subconsciously feel the connections. A lot of people picked up the ‘King’s Arrival’ music, but not a lot of people can hear the Unsullied theme underneath it.”
And of course, one of the best-loved tracks is “Light of the Seven,” a simple eerie piano melody used during a particularly brutal plot twist in the final episode of season six, “The Winds of Winter,” when Cersei Lannister blows up all of her enemies in a single stroke. Mr. Djawadi uses only piano in one other place in the series, in “The Long Night” episode of season eight for another pivotal revelation.
Saying farewell to a show this large will be difficult, but for any fans who want to relive their favorite scenes Mr. Djawadi will be appearing in select cities during a 20-city tour of the “Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience.” The tour will not come to Pittsburgh but does stop in Philadelphia on Sept. 12.
“It’s a great introduction to orchestral music for an audience that might not necessarily go to a classical concert,” Mr. Djawadi said. “Over the years I’ve heard many people say, ‘Ooh, Ramin, your music made me want to start learning the cello or the violin,’ and that’s so encouraging to hear people excited about an orchestral instrument because of my music. The response has been really overwhelming.”