[Thor Joachim Haga]

I’ve never thought of Vladimir Cosma, Francis Lai and Pino Donaggio as particularly “versatile” composers, though I like some or a lot or even all of their stuff, and would perfectly agree their music appears in different idioms.

Oh, I definitely think they are. Not necessarily in the “construction” of the music (not sure what that means, do you mean application?), but definitely across many different music genres, which is the versatility I’m speaking of.

As I said in the first post, almost every single film composer displays versatility to one extent or another. Their profession demands it. So yes, even John Williams, who we generally associate with a certain type of orchestral sound, has dipped into jazz, pop, rock, gospel, blues, avantgarde classical, even some synths.

But there are some composers out there who go back and forth between all these on a consistent, regular basis, and with almost equal skill in all of them. Like the ones I mentioned. Perhaps it isn’t always easy to find their “voice” in all of them (compared to a Williams or Goldsmith or Morricone), but the consistent versatility in itself is enough to impress.