Ramin Djawadi on writing music for Season 5’s most emotional scenes
By Dan Selcke
For five seasons, composer Ramin Djawadi has worked tirelessly to create stirring, memorable music for Game of Thrones, from the instantly identifiable opening theme to the foreboding melody of “The Rains of Castemere” to that terrifying drumbeat that plays whenever Daenerys sacks a city. Season 5 was no exception—off the top of my head, the plaintive string arrangement that plays whenever Drogon is on screen sticks out as particularly memorable, but the music was never less than excellent.
Djawadi recently sat down with Express to discuss his writing process and how he handled a few of the more emotionally charged moments of the season. To start, it ends up that Djawadi always watches the episodes before he writes music for them. That makes perfect sense, but somehow it never occurred to me that there are versions of the episodes floating around without any music in them. I wonder how different they must feel.
Djawadi usually works on three to four episodes at a time, and doesn’t look at the scripts unless it’s really important. Apparently, he read the scripts for Season 3’s “The Rains of Castamere,” as the Red Wedding qualified as “really important.” As for scoring the standout moments of Season 5, the toughest for him was Shireen’s death scene.
"I have kids of my own and it was just so emotional. I had to actually take breaks writing that scene. I would sketch it and then I would just have to walk away because I got too emotional about it. That was a tough one."
The resulting piece, a slow-burning string number that’s equal parts mournful and creepy, is very effective in the moment, so at least Djawadi’s difficulty with the scene paid off. Frankly, it’s good to hear that the composer is so willing to become emotionally invested in the show. That can only make the music better.
Cersei’s Walk of Shame was another tricky scene to score, although that had more to do with where to place the music than in writing anything new—anything other than an ironic rendition of “The Rains of Castamere” wouldn’t have gotten the job done. “She walks quite a bit without music and you heard the crowd and they’re screaming at her and when she finally breaks down—or shortly before, that’s when we bring the music in and we felt that that was quite effective,” Djawadi said.
Finally, Djawadi discussed writing the music for Jon Snow’s death scene, which transitioned from a hopeful fake-out to the saddest violin in the world. After Jon hears from Olly that Benjen might be alive, Djawadi trotted out one of the happier musical themes on the show.
"We knew it had to be the Stark theme. The piece before when Jon Snow runs downstairs—the music is actually quite misleading, it’s hopeful which in Game of Thrones doesn’t happen that often, it’s such a dark show…and then when he sees the sign it says “traitor” and rather than making it a bombastic moment we decided to make it rather small and put in a solo violin…The Stark theme plays on a solo violin and so it becomes quite an intimate moment—I think it makes it more emotional and I guess even more shocking that way.”"
What kind of compositions will Djawadi write for Season 6? Like so many of us, he doesn’t know what’s coming, so he has no way of knowing. Whatever he writes, he’s done enough good work for us to expect it to be great.