Ramin Djawadi Talks The Light of the Seven

I am not a movie or TV soundtrack person. There are a few TV themes I’m attached too–like the Downton Abbey opening for instance–but in general I’m not big on dramatic orchestrations that play underneath the drama. It has to be a really well done piece of music placed just right for me to even notice mot of the time….and that’s the way it should be. Unless it’s a musical, the music should be subtly enhancing, not getting in the way aurally.

I have made exceptions for Game of Thrones. The opening theme, Drogon’s Theme (which is actually the back half of a larger piece entitled “The Dance of Dragons”) and now Ramin Djawadi’s latest piece, from the finale, entitled “The Light of the Seven.” Djawadi sat down with The Hollywood Reporter after the finale and discussed his accidental hit among fans.

Ironically, Djawadi had only just joined Twitter this year, about halfway through the Game of Thrones season, so he had only a few followers prior to the finale, and a fairly quiet existence on social media. That all changed by 9:30pm EST on Sunday. “….when the finale aired, my Twitter account blew up.” You and the Sept of Baelor, buddy….

The interesting thing to me was the use of the piano. When we started the season, [showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss], and Miguel Sapochnik, the director of the episode, reached out to me and said, “There’s something coming up in episode 10.” We talked about “The Light of the Seven,” and how it needed to be a new piece of music. Any kind of character theme could tip it, and we didn’t want to tip the audience. Miguel brought it up: “What about the piano?” We discussed it. The piano is not really in the language of theGame of Thrones score. We went back and forth about it, and then we came up with the organ, which we used last season with Cersei during the atonement walk and some of the other scenes when she’s in prison. But the piano was the new instrument…. there’s really nothing like it. The piano has this decay and attack at the same time. We even experimented with the harp, but the harp was not as haunting as the piano. The piano has a huge dynamic range that almost no other instruments have

Djawadi says the fact that the opening scene has no dialogue for long stretches meant the track had to be nice and long too. (Nearly ten minutes.) One thing he also pointed out–I always assumed that I’m not noticing the music a lot of the time in the show…but actually for long periods, there is no music. That changes dramatically this season, which is why the entire set of episodes has felt different.

It was an amazing opportunity to have a long sequence that can carry music like this. In the history of Game of Thrones, there’s also a lot of sequences that are without music….Very rarely do we have these long pieces of music like this. This season I think we had it more than in any other season… even the early episodes, like the Hodor scenes [in “The Door”], that’s a ten minute section with all music and very beautiful shifts within. And the “Battle of the Bastards” as well. That’s a 22-minute sequence.

As for the vocalists in “The Light of the Seven,” which most people think is a boy’s choir–it is boys singing…but there are only two. Djawadi said that was inspired by “the little kids running around,” ie: Qyburn’s “Little Birds.” Just in case they weren’t creepy enough.

 

Via http://winteriscoming.net/2016/06/30/ramin-djawadi-talks-the-light-of-the-seven/