[Nicolai P. Zwar]

Of course you can recognize the melody of RAIDER’S OF THE LOST ARK theme everywhere. Just like you could recognize Goldsmith’s PLANET OF THE APES melody everywhere. That’s, I guess, somewhat the point of a melody: it’s a musical sequence of notes that you recognize regardless of harmony, rhythm, melody, etc…. those things.
But nevertheless I view melody as just one part of composition, and not even the most important part (not the least important part either… I suppose it depends on the type of composition… I think all elements of a composition are obviously important… but different compositions may pronounce different elements more, or set them into the foreground). Take Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, or Hindemith’s Symphonische Metamorphosen. The melodies of these compositions are by Diabelli or von Webern, but the compositions are clearly by Beethoven and Hindemith respectively. But the melodies themselves are not theirs, and melody is important of course.

It’s like you said, classical composers (and film composers as well) use folk sometimes folk tunes in their pieces… to do something with them. Take Mahler’s first symphony, where the famous “Frère Jacques” children’s canon becomes a somber and sarcastic funeral piece. And it sounds like Mahler. For THE RIVER WILD, Jerry Goldsmith used “The Water Is Wide” as a basic melody for the score, yet the resulting score sounds 100% like Jerry Goldsmith, in fact, the theme becomes very much his own, as they way it is used, it hardly sounds like the traditional song. But it remains recognizable.

Here’s a variation of Williams’ RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK… it’s obviously the melody, instantly recognizable as Raider’s, yet here it doesn’t sound like an adventure theme, but it’s a smooth piece of evening jazz:

I mean, melody is one of the basic building blocks of music, so most compositions have some form of melody, even something like Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps” has melody, even though the melody is often used fragmented and brutally torn apart… which is kinda the point of the piece.

But I still see melody as just one aspect of a composition.