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Kenneth Leighton (2 October 1929 – 24 August 1988) was a British composer and pianist. He had various academic appointments at the Universities of Leeds, Oxford and Edinburgh. His compositions include church and choral music, pieces for piano, organ, cello, oboe and other instruments, chamber music, concertos, symphonies, and an opera. ==Biography== Leighton was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire on 2 October 1929, to parents of modest means, who noted his musical ability early on and enrolled him as a chorister at Wakefield Cathedral. Encouraged by his mother and the parish priest (who helped obtain a piano), he began piano lessons 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 (including the Sonatina op.1a, 1946, his first published work). While still at school (in 1946) he obtained the Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music (LRAM) in piano performance. 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 (e.g. op.3 Symphony for Strings, 1949) with the Newbury String players and introduced him to Vaughan Williams, who facilitated and attended some of his performances in London.〔D. McVeagh, 2005, Gerald Finzi. His Life and Music, Boydell Press, 182, 194; K. Leighton, Memories of Gerald Finzi http://www.geraldfinzi.org/01-about/articles_03.php; cf. in R. Jordan (ed.), 2007, The Clock of the Years. A Gerald and Joy Finzi Anthology, Chosen Press, 45-6.〕 Leopold Stokowski premiered his overture Primavera Romana (op.14) with the Liverpool Philharmonic in 1951. In the same year he was awarded a Mendelssohn Scholarship, which enabled him to study with Goffredo Petrassi in Rome,〔He applied initially to study with Luigi Dallapiccola, who was unable to take him on. Largely on Leighton's instigation, Dallapiccola was awarded an honorary doctorate by Edinburgh University, where they met in 1973.〕 where he met his first wife, Lydia Angela Vignapiano, by whom he had two children (Angela and Robert). On his return from Italy in 1952, Leighton taught briefly at the Royal Marine School of Music in Deal. He held a Gregory Fellowship in music from 1953–56 at the University of Leeds, and in 1956 was appointed Lecturer, then Reader, in Music at 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.〔(Music Web International ); Smith 2004, 8〕 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; his early rise to prominence is all the more remarkable.〔For Finzi's visit to the Wakefield home, see McVeagh 2005, 215. And: http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2438315〕 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 occasionally 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 (notably harmony and counterpoint). 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'. 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 (musicians Peter, Raphael and Anita Lasker-Wallfisch) also dates from this period. Amongst his distinguished students at Oxford and Edinburgh were Donald Runnicles, Nicholas Cleobury, and the composer Nigel Osborne, who succeeded him as Reid professor at Edinburgh. James MacMillan also studied at Edinburgh during Leighton's tenure.〔R.Dunnett "Learning with Leighton", The Full Score (Novello) Winter 1998, 103; P. Spicer, 2011, Invocation. Choral Music by Kenneth Leighton and James MacMillan, REG CD348, p.3.〕 While he 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 Symphonies 2 and 3 (op.69 & 90) and Earth, Sweet Earth (op.94).〔Earth, Sweet Earth, "monumental in concept and execution" (ABACUS CD 109-2; Linn CKD329), using poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins; Symphony 3 (CHAN8741) has a setting of 'A Musical Instrument' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning; "Animal Heaven" (op.83) has settings by the Americans, Walt Whitman and James Dickey (MetierCD MSV92036).〕 Fond of walking his dog on the hills, Leighton loved the Scottish highlands and frequently visited the western islands (in the 1960s often in an old camper van). Trips to Mull and Iona in the early 1970s foreshadow the opera Columba (op.77, 1978). 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. His grave is in the Glen Sannox cemetery on Arran. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kenneth Leighton」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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