By Ramin Djawadi

Watertower Music

The Game of Thrones prequel maintains continuity with a key contributor…

HBO and the showrunners of House of the Dragon have made the smart decision to keep Ramin Djawadi behind the composer’s pen, and he hasn’t let them or us down. Being an entry in an existing franchise series means we do get to hear some familiar beats and melodies from time to time, but Djawadi is also clearly well aware that a show set in a different era with a new set of characters needs a lot of new sounds too.

In many ways – because we’re not that used to seeing or hearing different iterations of an overall franchise, and there’s really one genre set of shows that springs to mind as doing this – it’s the kind of duty needed from a Star Trek composer over the past 35 years or so, of a Star Wars one in more recent years. There needs to be a tone and feel that fits the overall world, so we know instantly by ear which franchise we’re in, while also having its own sound of its own mood and characters and events.

It’s not just a matter of bringing back a particular tune or refrain – be it the First Contact Borg theme in Picard, Ahsoka’s theme in The Mandalorian, or indeed “Winter Has Come” from the Game Of Thrones season 6 soundtrack echoed in “Reign Of The Targaryens” here. That said, perhaps “Surrender” having a main piano line that sounds awfully like the first couple of bars matching “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas” among the mournful strings and voice choir isn’t the sort of tone one might expect – albeit appropriate for the time of year if you need to pick a gift for a soundtrack collector.

House Of The Dragon certainly carries the air of Westeros with it, with the choices of orchestration, and its blend of dark tones for thoughts and plots, and rapidly vicious percussion in the moments of action. It also switches things around and evolves them for its own era of the world, for example by soaring strings and horns for the increased amount of aerial points of view in a more dragon-centric world.

There are notable returning and referenced themes beyond the series theme tune, which had appeared as the end credits music on the first episode and as the opening theme subsequently. Some of the returns are more surprising than the Targaryen-related music, with a few bars of “Rains Of Castamere” creeping in at one point to reference House Lannister, and a moment of the Kingsroad theme representing the Starks.

Most of the characters and factions, however, get new themes, with the “House Velaryon” and Green faction (represented well in “The Green Dress”) being particularly memorable. If there’s a word that should most appropriately define this soundtrack and the series, that word is “tragic.” Not in the 1970s or 80s colloquial sense of being rubbish, but in the true sense of making us feel the tragedy that the characters and their houses and factions are plunging inevitably towards in the series.

It conveys, right into your heart and mind, the epic scale and the wistfulness of hope and future loss. It’s probably closest in tone and quality to the GoT season 6 soundtrack, with strong reuse of phrasing from that score in some tracks, but it’s definitely its own season, and its own score, with more than it’s fair share of affecting orchestrations.

Verdict: With a whopping 44 tracks, and a slew of beautifully engaging and emotive compositions and orchestrations, Djawadi has done us proud again, and it’s great to hear his new compositions from Westeros.  10/10

David A McIntee