Kenneth Leighton

Kenneth Leighton was a British composer and pianist. His compositions include church and choral music, pieces for piano, organ, cello, oboe and other instruments, chamber music, concertos, symphonies, and an opera. He had various academic appointments in the Universities of Leeds, Oxford and, primarily, Edinburgh.

Biography

Leighton was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, on 2 October 1929, to parents of modest means, who noted his musical ability as a child and enrolled him as a chorister at Wakefield Cathedral. Encouraged by his mother and cathedral staff he began to play the piano at primary school and progressed precociously. In 1940, he gained a place at the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, played at school assemblies and concerts, and composed settings of poetry for voice and piano and solo piano pieces. While still at school he obtained the Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music in piano performance, aged 16.
With the benefit of a State scholarship to study Classics at University, Leighton was admitted to the Queen's College, Oxford in 1947, where he also won a Hastings Scholarship, obtaining a BA in Classics in 1950. After commencing his Classics degree he began to study simultaneously for a degree in Music, tutored by the composer Bernard Rose, and gained the Oxford Bachelor of Music in 1951. At Oxford he came to the attention of Gerald Finzi, an early supporter and friend, who performed some of his works with the Newbury String Players and introduced him to Vaughan Williams, who facilitated and attended some of his performances in London. Leopold Stokowski premiered his overture Primavera Romana with the Royal Philharmonic in Liverpool in 1951. In the same year he was awarded a Mendelssohn Scholarship, which enabled him to study with Goffredo Petrassi in Rome, where he met his first wife, Lydia Angela Vignapiano, by whom he had two children.
After his return from Italy in 1951, Leighton taught briefly at the Royal Marines School of Music in Deal. He held a Gregory Fellowship in music from 1953–56 in the University of Leeds, and in 1956 was appointed Lecturer, then Reader, in Music in the University of Edinburgh. In 1968, he moved to Oxford University, where he succeeded Edmund Rubbra as Fellow in Music of Worcester College. Leighton returned to Edinburgh as Reid Professor of Music in 1970, holding the chair until his death in 1988. He married Josephine Anne Prescott in 1981.
Unlike most of his Oxford contemporaries, Leighton came from a working-class area of an industrial northern town; so his early rise to prominence is all the more remarkable. Although he spent much of his adult life in Scotland, he always regarded himself as a down-to-earth Yorkshireman. He eschewed the possibility of a career as a pianist, hoping that a University position would allow him greater creative freedom and time to compose, although he periodically gave recitals and broadcasts, and frequently conducted the University orchestra. After the spell in Italy, his life was dominated by composing, which continued uninterrupted, notwithstanding an unsettled period in the late 1970s and early 1980s associated with divorce and remarriage. Leighton was a rather private man, averse to self-promotion and slightly shy of social occasions, who treasured peace and quiet, although he enjoyed family life and teaching. For most of his career he managed to reconcile university commitments with composing, but found this increasingly difficult in later years and was intending to retire early to have more time for composition. Indeed, Leighton never felt entirely at home or at ease with the title of 'university professor' and became disenchanted with the burden of administrative duties at Edinburgh. At Leeds he formed friendships with the poet Geoffrey Hill and the painters Terry Frost and Maurice de Sausmarez. A lasting friendship with the Wallfisch family also dates from this period. Amongst his distinguished students at Oxford and Edinburgh were Donald Runnicles, Nicholas Cleobury, and Nigel Osborne, who succeeded him as Reid professor at Edinburgh. James MacMillan also studied at Edinburgh during Leighton's tenure and described him as "a marvellous teacher". While Leighton wrote a good deal of church music, and has occasionally been categorised too reductively as a church-music composer, he was not a church-goer or member of any congregation, nor even conventionally religious. His interests in literature and love of nature and countryside are reflected in the settings of English poetry in many works, such as Laudes Animantium, Symphonies 2 and 3 and Earth, Sweet Earth. Fond of walking his dog on the hills, Leighton loved the Scottish highlands and frequently visited the western islands. Trips to Mull and Iona in the early 1970s foreshadow the opera Columba. He also had friends on the island of Arran, which he visited regularly. He died at home in Edinburgh in 1988, six months after being diagnosed with oesophageal cancer.

Music

Leighton's earliest youthful works, characteristic of his Oxford years and well exemplified by Veris Gratia, were influenced in part by the English tradition as represented by Vaughan Williams, Finzi, Herbert Howells, and Walton. His own more distinctive style, however, emerged and consolidated rapidly between 1950 and 1955, and probably owes as much to the period of study with Petrassi in Italy and familiarity with the work of a wide range of 20th-century European composers. He maintained a lifelong passion for the music of Bach. A few pieces reflect experimentation or flirtation with serialism, although Leighton's works are more generally typified by a strong sense of lyricism, diatonicism, contrapuntal mastery, chromaticism and rhythmic invention.
He composed a wide range of music for many different configurations of instruments, often for commissions, specific occasions and performers. His output includes church music, chamber, organ and solo piano music, as well as large-scale orchestral works and an opera based on the life of Columba. The sacred and liturgical music is widely known and performed regularly across the UK. Leighton did much to keep alive and transform the Victorian tradition of English choral music, purge its piety and drag it into the twentieth century. An enduringly popular early piece is Lully, Lulla, Thou Little Tiny Child, Op.25b, a setting of the Coventry Carol, while the hymn Drop, drop, slow tears has also appeared in numerous recordings. The boundaries between sacred, choral and secular music, however, are often blurred in Leighton's oeuvre, which makes extensive use of vocals. Hymns and chorales feature prominently in the instrumental music as well. A good example is 'The Shining River', which is at the core of the Fantasy on an American Hymn Tune, and also permeates the Second Symphony, juxtaposed with the Last Sermon of John Donne in the finale.
The solo piano music, which ranges from miniatures for younger players to demandingly advanced works, has been recorded by several artists, as also the works for organ, which include the celebratory Paean, the monumental duet Martyrs, the Prelude, Scherzo and Passacaglia, Missa de Gloria and an organ concerto with timpani, widely credited with injecting new life and vigour into the British organ repertoire of the late 20th century. The works for cello appear on various recordings, notably by Raphael Wallfisch; the cello concerto was premiered by Florence Hooton and Sir John Barbirolli in 1956.
Chamber works include the prize-winning Piano Trio, three string quartets, piano quintet and quartet, and the Fantasy Octet, incorporating themes by Percy Grainger, commissioned for the 1982 Edinburgh Festival Grainger centenary concert. In recent years the larger-scale works have also become better known thanks to new recordings. Amongst these is the second symphony, a meditation on death in memory of his mother. Albeit a profoundly spiritual work, this does not lack theatrical flair, including two scherzos, with jazzy touches, suggesting a composer with a sly sense of humour. The last piano pieces include three major works. They mark the culmination of a lifetime of writing for the instrument: a Sonata for Four Hands with jazzy rhythms and a haunting chorale; a Prelude, Hymn and Toccata for two pianos, with a central Hymn, and final Toccata; and the revelatory Four Romantic Pieces, described by one reviewer as some of the most powerful and imaginative piano music of the late 20th century.
Most of Leighton's works have been recorded and are commercially available, although several notable exceptions remain. Much of his output is published by Novello and Co.

Works

Works with opus numbers

1a Sonatina No. 1
1b Sonatina No. 2
2 Sonata No. 1
3 Symphony for Strings
4 Violin Sonata No. 1
5 Elegy
6 Veris Gratia, Cantata
7 Scherzo
8 Hippolytus
9 Veris Gratia, Suite
10 Just Now the Lilac is in Bloom
11a Napoli, Rhapsody on Neapolitan themes
11 Piano Concerto No. 1
12 Violin Concerto
14 Primavera Romana
15 Concerto for Viola, Harp, Timpani & String Orch
16 The Light Invisible
17 Sonata No. 2
18 Passacaglia, Chorale and Fugue
19 Burlesque
19a Serenade
20 Violin Sonata No. 2
21 A Christmas Carol
22 Five Studies
23 Concerto for Oboe & String Orchestra
24 Fantasia Contrappuntistica
25 Three Carols
26 Concerto for Two Pianos, Timpani, Orchestra
27 Piano Sonata No. 3
28 The Birds
29 Fantasia on the name Bach
30 Variations
31 Cello Concerto ;
32 String Quartet No. 1
33 String Quartet No. 2
34 Piano Quintet
35 Partita for cello/piano
36 Nine Variations for piano
37 Piano Concerto No. 2
38 Crucifixus Pro Nobis
39 Concerto for String Orchestra
40 Missa Sancti Thomae
41 Prelude, Scherzo and Passacaglia
42 Symphony No. 1
43 Seven Variations
44 Mass
45 Communion Service in D
46 Piano Trio
47 Pieces for Angela
48 Metamorphoses
49 Et Resurrexit
50 Missa Brevis
51 Conflicts: Fantasy on Two Themes
52 Sonata for Solo Cello
53 Dance Suite No. 1
54 Three Psalms
55 Easter Sequence
56 Six Study–Variations
57 Piano Concerto No. 3
58 Organ Concerto
59 Dance Suite No. 2
60 Dance Overture
61 Laudes Animantium
62 Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis
63 Piano Quartet
64 Piano Sonata
65 Six Elizabethan Lyrics
66 Sarum Mass
67 Mass for Ampleforth
68 Laudate Pueri
69 Symphony No. 2, "Sinfonia mistica"
70 Fantasy on an American Hymn Tune
71 Laudes Montium
72 Six Fantasies on Hymn Tunes
73 Martyrs, Dialogues on a Scottish Psalm Tune
74 Hymn to Matter
75 Sequence for All Saints
76 Improvisations, De profundis
77 Columba
78 Columba mea, Song of Songs
79 Awake my Glory
80 Fantasy on a Chorale
81 Missa Cornelia
82 Missa de Gloria
83 Animal Heaven
84 These are thy wonders
85 Alleluia Pascha Nostrum
86 Household Pets
87 Fantasy-Octet
88 Concerto for Harpsichord, Recorder and String Orchestra
89 Dance Suite No. 3: Scottish Dances
90 Symphony No. 3, "Laudes Musicae"
91 The World's Desire
92 Sonata for Piano Duet
93 Veni Redemptor
94 Earth, Sweet Earth
95 Four Romantic Pieces
96 Prelude, Hymn and Toccata