House Of The Dragon’s musical score is heavily influenced by Daemon and Rhaenyra Targaryen, its world-famous composer Ramin Djawadi has revealed.
After Game of Thrones dominated the TV landscape for eight series, its main theme, created by Djawadi, grew to become one of the most recognisable in TV history.
Unsurprisingly, then, the Iranian-German score composer was invited back to the HBO franchise to create the new prequel’s opening music, and he’s shared how Matt Smith, Milly Alcock, and Emma D’arcy’s characters inspired the theme.
Djawadi exclusively told Metro.co.uk about his return to Westeros for House of The Dragon and how his process differed between the two series.
‘We decided we needed new material,’ Djawadi said. ‘This show is new characters, and even within the House of Targaryen, there are certain breakout characters.’
Similar to a Stark theme and Arya’s own theme in Game of Thrones, Djawadi decided that certain House Of The Dragon characters would also have their own too.
The characters in question this time around are Daemon and Rhaenyra Targaryen.
‘That’s how we kind of started developing the new score for this,’ Djawadi told us.
‘I think the only big challenge was that there was such a history with Game of Thrones and eight seasons of so much music and material. I just really wanted to push myself, to expand and evolve with the score.’
On whether he was going to always come back for the prequel, Djawadi said he was ‘hungry for more Westeros-type music’.
‘I was excited to come back to this world,’ Djawadi enthused, especially after watching the saw the first episode.
‘I thought, wow, this is, this is great. They’ve done such a great job with bringing us back into King’s Landing, It’s such a great show. So I’m very happy to be part of it.’
But, how did Djawadi find crafting the sound of Westeros 200 years earlier than the main series?
‘We talked about how we’d connect it all and we’d also make it a little bit different,’ he explained. ‘So overall, I would say when you hear the music, it definitely sounds like Game of Thrones-type music.
‘The cello is still the leading instrument, but I tried sonically to also mix it up and try to find sounds and instruments that I had not used, which was actually very hard.’
This led Djawadi towards more woodwind and flute-type instruments for textures here and there.
‘We thought, well, maybe we could say that those instruments were used that much earlier, 100 years before, and then by the time we get to Game of Thrones, those instruments just kind of vanished or were not used anymore. So that was our thought behind it.’
On re-working the Game of Thrones theme rather than creating a new theme for the show Dajawadi said: ‘We just wanted to make a statement of saying this is Game of Thrones, this is part of the same family.
‘For the original show, we always felt that the main theme was an overarching theme for all of the characters for the entire world of Westeros, so we felt the same thing here to make that connection again.’
Had Djawadi read the source material?
‘Actually, I have not,’ he told us. ‘I did not read the Game of Thrones books originally. I actually like to be surprised by how the show was created episodically and unless I have to, I don’t even read the script.
‘I like to see it like the audience will see it. When they have the episode in decent shape, they’ll send me the episode and I sit down to watch it.
‘I want to watch it and be surprised, and then that influences me musically.’
Watch House of the Dragon on NOW and Sky Atlantic.
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