Organ Masterworks IV: Kenneth Leighton’s Prelude, Scherzo and Passacaglia, op.41

I cannot remember where or when I first heard Kenneth Leighton’s Prelude, Scherzo and Passacaglia, op.41. I think it must have been in the early 1970s when I was learning to play the organ. However, I do recall buying a copy of the score in Biggar’s’ music shop in Sauchiehall Street. It was published by Novello in their International Series of Contemporary Organ Music and was still issued in the buff-coloured cover. I knew that it was beyond me at that time. It is still in my library, read, but unplayed.

Despite being a Yorkshireman, Kenneth Leighton is often regarded as an “honorary” Scottish composer. Born on 2 October 1929, he was a pupil at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, and chorister at Wakefield Cathedral. In 1947, Leighton read Classics at Queen’s College, Oxford, before including music in his fourth year, studying under Bernard Rose. He relocated to Rome in 1951 to study with the Italian composer, conductor and academic Goffredo Petrassi (1904-2003). Petrassi introduced him to several stylistic tools, including neoclassicism, Bergian serialism and some post-Webern ‘avant-garde’ techniques. Yet, Leighton was not a “method” composer: to each technique he brings his own unique imagination. He taught at the universities in Leeds and Oxford before he was appointed as Reid Professor of Music at Edinburgh University in 1970. Kenneth Leighton died in Edinburgh on 24 August 1988.

Leighton’s catalogue is wide-ranging and includes three symphonies, various concertos, the opera Columbia, chamber music, piano pieces and many church anthems and services. His contribution to the organ loft is significant. He is best recalled for his Fanfare in Easy Modern Organ Music, Book 1 (OUP, 1967) and the Paean in Modern Organ Music, Book 2 (OUP, 1967). Larger scale works for that instrument include Et Resurrexit (Theme, Fantasy, and Fugue) op. 49 (1966), and the Six Fantasies on Hymn Tunes, op. 72 (1975). Significantly there is also an Organ Concerto, op.58 (1970) and the large-scale solo, Missa de Gloria, op. 82 (1980).

For choir leaders looking for interesting anthems and services, there is Give me the wings of faith (1962), What Love is this of thine? (1985) and the Missa Brevis, op.50 (1967). Lovers of the British pastoral school of orchestral music as exemplified by Gerald Finzi and Ralph Vaughan Williams will find Veris Gratia for cello and orchestra, op.6 (1950) hauntingly beautiful.

Kenneth Leighton’s music is typically approachable, sometimes challenging, but nearly always with an underlying romanticism and deeply felt lyricism. Major influences on his style include Bach and Brahms, as well as Bartók, Dallapiccola and Hindemith. The latest edition of the British Music Society’s British Composer Profiles (2012) has well summed up his achievement: “it bears a highly distinctive hallmark…often deeply religious, always sincere…never sombre, it can exhibit a wildness of spirit or express exuberance and merriment without ever loosing dignity, it can be passionate, austere, granitic or gentle, but displays an unerringly faultless craftsmanship…”

The Prelude, Scherzo and Passacaglia, op.41 was commissioned by Dr Bryan Hesford, the then organist of Brecon Cathedral and was premiered by him at Norwich Cathedral on 24 October 1963. Lasting for more than twenty minutes it is based on the development of a simple melodic motif which is expressed in the opening bars of the Prelude. The Scherzo is essentially a baroque gigue that juxtaposes edgy music with something that is inherently playful. The Passacaglia, which is based on a twelve-note theme, creates a darker and more intense mood than the preceding scherzo. It is used, twisted, and then turned back on itself. The entire work is a clever balance of traditional contrapuntal devices and more contemporary harmonic language. The overall impression is of a work of consummate skill, responding to all the possibilities of the medium. It is hard to believe that this was Leighton’s first essay for the organ.

Organist and musicologist John Henderson (A Directory of Composers for Organ, 1996) has concisely described the Prelude, Scherzo and Passacaglia as “A fine piece which has stood the test of time well, the prelude is chromatic and neurotic, the scherzo is impish though demonic, and the passacaglia builds up to a dramatic conclusion.”

I agree with Arthur Milner, (Musical Opinion, October 1964), that this is “the finest composition for organ by an English composer of the last thirty years.” (i.e. from the 1930s to the 1960s). For me, it is Leighton’s organ masterwork.

With thanks to the Glasgow Diapason where this essay was first printed.