5 shows that prove Bear McCreary is the best composer on television

Da Vinci’s Demons

Da Vinci’s Demons is a tricky show to describe. It tells the story of a young Leonardo DaVinci as he seeks out truths and generally upsets the establishment in Rome with his outlandish theories. The shows plays fairly fast and loose with historical accuracy and doesn’t get hung up about including anachronisms here or there. Think more A Knight’s Tale than The Last Kingdom, and you’ll have a decent idea of what I’m talking about.

One place where Da Vinci’s Demons was rock solid, however, was its excellent music. The opening won an Emmy for Outstanding Main Title Theme Music in 2013, an accolade that seems more deserved the closer you look at the piece.

Staying true to the idea of the character of Leonardo da Vinci, who was known to possess the skill to write backwards, Bear McCreary composed the title theme as a musical palindrome, meaning it plays the same forwards and backwards. Below, McCreary breaks it down and then reverses the footage to prove how mindblowing the whole thing is.

In scoring Da Vinci’s Demons, McCreary honed in on specific characters and explored them musically with an amount of depth that is so impressive it borders on incomprehensible. There’s a beautiful harp and violin piece to accompany da Vinci’s love interest, Lucrezia Donati; an ominous string arrangement to announce the villainy of the Pope; and an uplifting song with bits of Middle Eastern flair to represent the horizon-broadening Sons of Mithras cult.

Whether you like the show or not, there’s no denying that its music was groundbreaking.