Leighton, Kenneth (b Wakefield, 2 October, 1929 - d Edinburgh, 1988)
Leighton was a chorister at Wakefield Cathedral and educated at the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School. In 1946, while still at school he gained the LRAM Piano Performer's diploma, and in 1947 he went up to The Queen's College, Oxford, on a Hastings Scholarship in Classics; in 1951 he graduated both BA in Classics, and B.Mus.. In the same year he won the Mendelssohn Scholarship and went to Rome to study with Petrassi.

Leighton was Professor of Theory at the Royal Naval School of Music in 1952/3, and Gregory Fellow in Music at the University of Leeds from 1953 to 1955. In 1955, he was appointed Lecturer in Music at the University of Edinburgh, where he was made Senior Lecturer and then Reader. In 1968 he returned to Oxford as University Lecturer in Music and Fellow of Worcester College. In October 1970 he was appointed Reid Professor of Music at the University of Edinburgh, the post which he held until his death in 1988.