Kenneth Leighton

Kenneth Leighton (b. Wakefield, October 2, 1929, d. Edinburgh, August 24, 1988) was an English composer. Leighton was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire and was a chorister at Wakefield Cathedral from 1937 to 1942. He earned the LRAM Piano Performer's Diploma in 1946. In 1947 he went to The Queen's College, Oxford on a Hastings Scholarship in Classics. In 1950, he graduated with both BA in Classics and in 1951 with a BMus (having studied with Bernard Rose). In the same year he won the Mendelssohn Scholarship and went to Rome to study with the Italian avant garde composer Goffredo Petrassi.