As a film music buff, this is a bit of a jolt because the generation of film music composers who emerged in the late 50s and 1960s and who helped me fall in love with the genre, have always had an eternal quality to them. In that era the generation of Miklos Rozsa, Franz Waxman, Alfred Newman and Bernard Herrmann began to give way to the new generation of Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams and Elmer Bernstein who dominated the great scores written for the movies for decades to come.
Jerry is now the first of the giants of that era to leave us, and as his family now mourns, those of us who have appreciated his score masterpieces like "The Blue Max", "Planet Of The Apes", "Patton" (for which he was shafted out of an Oscar by the undeserving score for "Love Story"), "The Sand Pebbles", "Capricorn One" the eerie "The Omen" (his only Oscar) and "Star Trek: The Motion Picture."
RIP Jerry and thank you for the rich legacies that film music buffs like me will gladly listen to again and again for the rest of our lives.
