Game of Thrones is about to come to an end, and composer Ramin Djawadi knows how it all goes down.
Not that he is saying anything. Such is the secrecy around the final season that Djawadi hasn’t even played the music for his wife ahead of the Season 8 premiere on HBO on April 14.
“I watched it by myself and was just floored at what’s happening,” Djawadi told Reuters Television. “I immediately go ‘How am I going to paint this musically and what am I going to do with my score?’ knowing that this is it for me.”
The German-Iranian composer wrote the score for all seven prior seasons of the medieval fantasy about warring families, dragons and zombies in the fictional kingdom of Westeros.
Using cellos to anchor the score, Djawadi, 44, wrote musical themes for dozens of different characters as well as the rival households.
“I liked the tone of the cello, the range of the cello. It can play really low, and this show being primarily a dark show, I just felt it was a great melody instrument for that,” he said.
Flutes were banned and the piano only made its entrance in the Season 6 finale with the haunting “Light of the Seven” theme when Queen Cersei is silently plotting mass revenge.
Djawadi, who won an Emmy in 2015 for his Game of Thrones work, said the no-flute rule came from early discussions with TV series creators David Benioff and DB Weiss.
“It really came from the idea that this is a fantasy period piece and we don’t want to have medieval flutes,” Djawadi said.
With its vast cast, Game of Thrones is known for the often brutal deaths of beloved characters. Djawadi said he was still traumatized by the burning at the stake of Princess Shireen in 2015, and the loss of gentle giant Hodor three years ago.
“I write from my heart because that’s how I really feel at that moment and it gets quite emotional for me. Sometimes I do have to take a step away and take a moment and work on something else,” he said.
“I think it will be very hard for me to say goodbye to these themes and to the show and the music. How exactly I feel when I do, I just don’t know yet.”
