WhenHouse of the Dragon’s first episode premiered it was noticeably missing opening credits meaning the well-knownGame of Thronesmain theme was missing from. For close to a decade fans obsessively watched the opening credits of the original series for Easter eggs while listening to its main theme and the premiere of the prequel series created a stark contrast. Though from Episode 2, the opening credits set on the main theme song of the original series were established with visuals leaving traces of what’s to come. In a recent appearance on theGame of ThronespodcastcomposerRamin Djawadi, who scored both the original series and its spinoff, discussed the importance of using the theme song inHouse of the Dragon.
While working on the original series, Djawadi wanted to create a title theme that reflects a journey given there were many locations and characters in the show and the narrative involves much traveling. For this purpose, he chose to use the cello as the main instrument and combined it with several other instruments. In time the mainGame of Thronestheme became a synonym for the entire series.
The composer also explained “the main theme since the beginning, well the intention was always that that’s a theme that stands for everybody. Right? That’s the overarching theme for the whole show.” Adding that the nice thing about the overarching theme is that “when we feel there’s something of high importance we can say okay, now it is time to use the main theme. And this goes back to the original show, where we did not use it until the later episodes – Episodes 9 and 10 – that’s when we said okay, now it’s time to start using [it].”
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He further explained that the same concept has been used for House of the Dragon. To highlight the key moments of the series the main theme has been simply used as is or been combined with various character themes. Djawadi said, “same now inHouse of the Dragon. Where we felt towards the end of the episode, this is obviously of such significance, let’s use the “Main Title” theme.” Interestingly while episode 2 brings in theGame of Thronestile theme, the finale episode closes with a mix of Rhaenyra’s theme with the title theme signaling, the dance of the dragons has finally begun.
House of the Dragonis streaming on HBO Max. You can check out the main theme fromGame of Thronesbelow:
