It’s amazing to think that 15 years have passed, since I last presented my live radio show Magnificent Movie Music, on the much missed, Leith FM.

A rare opportunity to relay my love for the music of the movies, to the good people of Leith...and beyond. It was an experience I look back on it with enormous gratitude.

Movie music has been with us ever since the silent era, then when silence inevitably morphed into sound. I guess that for movie fans today it’s Hans Zimmer who dominates the podium and recording studio.

So it’s no great surprise, he is presently the go-to-guy for providing a vigorous, energetic soundtrack, to the latest movie blockbuster.

Glancing back, I would say that arguably the greatest decade for film music came throughout the 1960s. How did I come to that conclusion? Well, a number of obvious aspects immediately sprang to mind.

For one thing, many of the most exalted figures from the earliest days of movie soundtracks were still active and producing high quality work for the screen.

Names such as – Miklos Rozsa, Bernard Herrmann, Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, Franz Waxman and Dimitri Tiomkin.

Then there were the composers who first emerged at the beginning of the 1950s, and really got into their stride during the next decade, such as Alex North, Elmer Bernstein, Henry Mancini and Nino Rota.

By the beginning of the 1960s, a brand new batch of young composers gradually appeared on the scene, providing a fresh and vibrant new sound for the cinema.

So, along came – John Barry, Maurice Jarre, Lalo Schifrin, Quincy Jones, while not forgetting the unforgettable, Ennio Morricone.

If that wasn’t enough, two young American composers burst onto the scene from the more intimate environs of television, whose musical talents would go a long way to shaping how film music would be perceived and appreciated over the next four decades – John Williams & Jerry Goldsmith.

Both men are widely considered to be the most influential and innovative American film composers ever, whose musical outputs have taken them from a galaxy far, far away, to a terrifying outer space, where nobody can hear you scream.

Speaking personally, I often think that Williams and Goldsmith are like the Lennon & McCartney of film music – each a master of his craft, and each providing the soundtracks that have enriched so many popular and successful films over the decades.

John Williams contribution to the art of the film score is incalculable, placing him highly amongst all those other movie music names from the storied past.

At his best, his music is magical, whisking the movie fan to a world far beyond their imaginations, as it accompanies everything from whip cracking adventure, to the terrors of the deep, to a bicycle flying across the moon.

Of course, many will automatically connect him to his many collaborations with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas; indelible work that has brought him numerous Oscars and worldwide acclaim. A long way away from his early days working on fantasy TV series such as – Lost In Space, Land Of The Giants and The Time Tunnel.

As for Jerry Goldsmith, my initial exposure to his work also came via the TV screen, first with the haunting theme to Dr Kildare, then with the action packed spy series, The Man From Uncle, followed up later with the instantly catchy theme for that popular homespun family saga, The Waltons.

As his career evolved, his music embraced, supported and elevated so many great movies, often bringing daring innovation and musical audacity to an entire range of subject matters. No genre was beyond Goldsmith’s musical approach, whether it was Sci-Fi, fantasy, horror, western, war, epic, or suspense thriller; with the variety and complex richness of his music, always astonishing.

Although in the public’s eye, Goldsmith was often overshadowed by his illustrious contemporary, his unique grasp of the emotional undercurrents of a film, place him very much in a class by himself, with his influence continuing undiminished.

We movie fans should all feel extremely blessed and fortunate that we lived through an era when both of these great men were creating such wonderful music for us to enjoy time and time again.

Sadly, as cinema changes direction, and with the way that the art of film scoring is evolving technically, I doubt we will ever see their likes again.