Game of Thrones composer Ramin Djawadi is a storyteller, and his medium is music. Speaking to Variety, Djawadi says his job is to discover “what is it that makes you feel angry or sad or emotional” using his melodies. What of his best recent creations is “Truth,” aka the Jon Snow-Daenerys Targaryen love theme.
We heard the fullest expression of this theme during the Jon-Dany sex scene in the season 7 finale, but it was present throughout the season; the trick was not giving the romance game away too early. “I went all the way to the seventh episode and wrote the boat scene first, and that’s where I established this theme.”
When we first play it during one of their meetings, you sort of pick it up as a new theme, but it really doesn’t put, in one way or another, of what’s to come. We definitely didn’t want to establish right away that there’s going to be this love relationship coming out of it, so it gets played differently — a lot less emotional — until there’s more and more hints of their relationship. Then the melody develops further.
Until finally, there is boat sex.
Djawadi may be best known for his work on Thrones, but he’s also the composer for fellow HBO genre juggernaut Westworld; he’s actually nominated for both shows at the upcoming Emmys, which should make for an intense contest with himself.
Anyway, Djawadi revealed his inspiration for Westworld’s creepy opening titles:
There’s an element of synthesizers and organic instruments, so the acoustic guitar representing the Western world, and then the piano actually, I feel, is always the glue between the two sounds. But the main title really captures the overall mood of that by having all those kinds of instruments play together.
But whether he’s writing music about killer robots or zombie dragons, Djawadi’s focus remains on using music to tell the story.
It really is a big part of storytelling — be it either in the background, under dialogue, or when there’s no dialogue, and you really have music in the foreground. Both those approaches are a way of storytelling and pushing the story forward. I always like to think of music as if you were to turn the picture off, actually. Just by listening to the piece of music, there’s a story there and a connection to the characters and the plots and all of that.
Djawadi is currently on tour with the Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience and probably hasn’t started writing the score for season 8 yet. We can’t wait to see what he comes up with.
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