The Small Council: What was the best piece of music from Game of Thrones Season 5?

For five years now, Ramin Djawadi has composed the music on Game of Thrones. His work has been hugely important in establishing the mood for the show, and his opening theme has already entered the pantheon of great TV theme songs. This week, the writers at Winter is Coming debate which of his Season 5 compositions most deserves recognition.

To help us (and you) make our (and your) decisions, here are links to all the songs Djawadi wrote for Season 5, together with some helpful reminders of when they were used.

• “Atonement” (“The Wars to Come”: Cersei and Jaime talk over Tywin’s corpse.)
• “Kneel for no Man” (“The Wars to Come”: Stannis Baratheon has Mance Rayder burned alive, but Jon Snow mercy-kills him him with an arrow through the heart.)
• “Jaws of the Viper” (“The House of Black and White”: Jamie and Cersei receive Myrcella’s pendant. “The Dance of Dragons”: Ellaria swears fealty to Doran. “Mother’s Mercy”: Myrcella dies.)
• “Blood of the Dragon” (“The House of Black and White”, “The Dance of Dragons”: Used in the end credits.)
• “House of Black and White” (Used in various scenes with Arya in the House of Black and White.)
• “Kill the Boy” (“High Sparrow”: Jon Snow executes Janos Slynt.)
• “High Sparrow” (Used throughout the season in scenes featuring the High Sparrow and his followers.)
• “Son of the Harpy” (“Sons of the Harpy”: The Sons of the Harpy battle the Unsullied. “The Dance of Dragons”: the Sons of the Harpy storm Daznak’s Pit.)
• “Before the Old Gods” (“Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken”: Sansa is wed to Ramsay Bolton.)
• “I Dreamt I Was Old” (“The Gift”: Maester Aemon Targaryen dies and Sam eulogizes him.)
• “Hardhome, Part 1” (“Hardhome”: The White Walkers ambush Hardhome.)
• “Hardhome, Part 2” (“Hardhome”: Used during the battle at Hardhome.)
• “Forgive Me” (“The Dance of Dragons”: Shireen is burned at the stake. “Mother’s Mercy”: Melisandre returns to Castle Black.)
• “Dance of Dragons” (“The Dance of Dragons”: Drogon comes to Daznak’s Pit.)
• “The Wars to Come” (“Mother’s Mercy”: Sansa prepares to escape Winterfell and Stannis prepares to meet the Bolton army.)
• “Mother’s Mercy” (“Mother’s Mercy”: Cersei is stripped, shaved, and takes her Walk of Shame.)

DAN: Sansa’s wedding to Ramsay Bolton was the most controversial sequences of Season 5, but the more time passes, the more I’m starting to think it was also one of most carefully put together. Visually, the scene was breathtaking: the set used for the Winterfell godswood was eerie and beautiful, while the costumes—particularly Sansa’s—were precisely tailored to be emblematic of the characters who wore them.

The music played an enormous role in setting the tone for this sequence. The composition that plays as Sansa walks down the aisle—”Before the Old Gods”—is made of up of mournful, three-note string progressions, with many notes held for seconds at a time, a favorite trick of Djawadi’s. Upon hearing it, “Before the Old Gods” instantly brings up feelings of sadness and foreboding, emotions very much in evidence as Sansa makes her long walk to the heart tree. In those moments, it starts to dawn on Sansa just what she’s gotten herself into, and any shreds of innocence she had been holding on to are well and truly lost. Djawadi is able to weave those feelings into his piece, giving it a heartbreaking impact.

It’s worth noting that Djawadi based this song around “I Am Hers, She Is Mine,” a love theme from Season 2 we often heard during Robb and Talisa’s romantic moments. Here, he twists it into something dark, grotesque, and unforgettable. It’s difficult to describe exactly why something as emotional as music hits someone the way it does, but “Before the Old Gods” hits me hard. I think it’s the most evocative thing Djawadi wrote for Season 5.

CAMERON: As was so often the case with this season, Arya got some of the best stuff. That includes the music for the House of Black and White (which is actually called “The House of Black and White” on the soundtrack; Djawadi could not be less like Michael Giacchino even if he tried). This moody piece really completes the setting of the training house; at times, you can almost hear the faint traces of the melodic Stark theme poking through, but it’s buried in layers of dust and mystery—appropriate, as Arya journeys to abandon her family name and become hidden among the dust and mystery herself.

ANI: I don’t notice a lot of background music when I watch Game of Thrones. That’s partly because I’m watching so intently the first time around, and am so immersed in the world the production has built, that my brain simply accepts the backing track the same way I accept the foley sounds added to every scene—as utterly natural. (This may be because I’m one of those people who hears music in my head at all times, so life having a soundtrack is just the way of the world to me.) It has to be something really jarring or really spectacular for my brain to stop and really hear the music in any scene.

That spectacular moment this season comes at timestamp 1:34 in Ramin Djawadi’s track “Dance of Dragons.” The music pauses, like the world holds still. And then that chord. A long viola note, the E melodic minor chord grabs your heartstrings and vibrates them hard, so lonesome I could cry. Drogon turns and sees Dany, and the two of them, kept apart all this season, are finally rejoined, mother and son, as they should be. I seriously fall to pieces just listening to the track. The whole back half of this piece sums up the end of Season 5 for me, the darkest and bleakest of all the seasons of Game of Thrones to date, in a soaring melancholy melody, straining to be free of the pains of this world and fly away, leaving all of it—the death, the war, the hunger, the rage, the hurt, and the despair—behind.

RAZOR: Well, since the track that played over Jon Snow’s death scene was apparently not a new composition (Dan’s note: It’s “Goodbye, Brother,” a song from the first season), and because Ani chose my other favorite piece, I am going to go with “I Dreamt I Was Old,” the song that played over Maester Aemon’s funeral. I feel like Ramin Djawadi really captured Aemon’s final moments in life; the song sent him off in a way that was worthy of one who was once offered the chance to become king.

When filming for Season 5 began, and we found out that Maester Aemon would in fact die at Castle Black and not at sea, I was worried that we would not get some version of that iconic line, “I dreamt I was old, Egg.” However, the writers not only gave us that line, but they did it in a way that elicited feelings of both sadness but joy—sadness that a great man was passing, but joy that he had lived a long and fulfilled life. Ramin Djawadi’s score perfectly encapsulated that moment.

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Next: Sound designer Paula Fairfield on creating sound effects for dragons and White Walkers