[Thor Joachim Haga]

I never considered Goldsmith a ‘tunesmith’. Even though he could churn out a great theme, his strength lies elsewhere (like, say, variations on a theme, or rhythmical figures and phrasings).

For sure, I would agree on John Williams, James Horner and Henry Mancini. Brilliant tunesmiths, all of them.

Tiomkin, as Malte mentioned, was THE tunesmith of the Golden Agers, although the tunes often lacked a bit of complexity.

Zimmer was a great tunesmith in his “golden period” (between 1988-2003), not so much in the last two decades. Besides, he’s more about other things, like painting in musical colours.

I agree on Delerue, although he really only had ONE tunesmith strength — the bittersweet melody.

Of the other people on my top 10 list, I need to give a shoutout to Giorgio Moroder and Ennio Morricone. Although Morricone often played around with classical melodies rather than composing them for their own sake — inverting them, changing them, commenting on them (like having one note off, or a weird rhythmical backdrop). But he could write melodies like few others.

Obviously, there are tons others. Burt Bacharach, A.R. Rahman, Elmer Bernstein, George Fenton, Patrick Doyle, Harold Faltermeyer, Klaus Doldinger, Marc Shaiman, Michael Kamen, Randy Edelman….and so on. All of them known for their melodic finesse.