Game of Thrones Orchestral Medley - DPops HD

by Ramin Djawadi arr. Hannah Lawrence DC‘19, Jack Wesson TC‘19 As you enter the theatre, please hold the door open for those behind you, sit down, and let us welcome you to the renowned universe of George R. R. Martin, where dragons are as common as incest, incest is as common as death, and death is as common as people who look way too much like Robb Stark. In a wonderful foil to Tolkien’s idyllic style of fantasy, the world of Westeros is a darker, more sinister take on the genre; its iconic music parallels this by converting the spritely woodwind spotlight of Middle Earth to a rugged and unpolished dysphoria of strings and reverberating drums. At the risk of dragon on about the world, let us now turn to the music itself. The main theme roars to life immediately, blazoning the main houses’ coats of arms as the world of Westeros literally builds itself into existence in the series’ opening sequence. Beginning with a cello-viola feature in which the two instruments come together like brother and sister, the familiar melody builds to a grand peak before fading into the Light of the Seven, a dramatic piece that will certainly ignite powerful memories of the Season 6 finale. With a melancholy piano line — the first time a piano is featured in the show’s soundtrack — an organ, and a woodwind incarnation of a choir, the religious yet disquiet theme increases in tension as more players successively enter the Frey. Suddenly, the frenzied musical lines combust into a final explosion of notes, quickly turning to an ashen silence mirroring the sensation the accompanying scene garners. As the Seven New Gods are forced to face the Lannister’s light, it seems only fitting that their chillingly powerful, yet melancholy Lannister anthem begins. The Rains of Castamere is a bard’s song commemorating the House Lannister, for its obliteration of the rebelling House Reyne (the basis of the play on words in the title.) While this song is typically meant to be sung by a solo singer, the series also adapts it various times as an orchestral piece; in its most horrific incarnation, it is the piece played during the Red Wedding, purring murmurously to life when the doors to the wedding chamber are closed and locked. On the theme of bloody massacre, Blood of my Blood takes it on home, just like our favorite Mother of Dragons* in her speech rallying the khalasaar to ride the wooden horses across the Narrow Sea and take the Seven Kingdoms for her own. The piece features both draconic (or should we say dragonic?) rhythms and soaring melodies, and is just as fiery as the Breaker of Chains herself. When her dragon finally descends in a flash of scales, the melody similarly takes full flight with an epic chromatic scale echoed across all instruments. This brings the final piece to an end, and looks optimistically onwards towards the next season, to premiere this July, only on HBO. *Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of the Andals,