Kenneth Leighton

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Kenneth Leighton (2 October 1929 - August 24, 1988) was a British composer and pianist. His compositions include much Anglican church music, and many pieces for choir and for piano as well as concertos, symphonies, much chamber music and an opera. He wrote a well-known setting of the Coventry Carol. He spent his last 18 years as Professor of Music at Edinburgh University. Leighton was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire on 2 October 1929. He attended Queen Elizabeth Grammar School and became a chorister at Wakefield Cathedral. As well as singing, he took piano lessons and gained his Licentiate of the Royal College of Music (LRAM) in piano performance in 1946. He went to Queen's College, Oxford in 1947 on a Hastings Scholarship to study Classics. At the same time, he continued to study music, his teachers including the composer Bernard Rose, and he gained two degrees: a BA in Classics in 1950, and a BMus in 1951.