Unlike most of his Oxford contemporaries, Leighton came from a working-class area of an industrial northern town; so his early rise to prominence is all the more remarkable.

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.

At Leeds he formed friendships with the poet Geoffrey Hill and the painters Terry Frost and Maurice de Sausmarez.

[7] While Leighton 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 Laudes Animantium (Op.

[8] 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).

[9] His own more distinctive style, however, emerged and consolidated rapidly between 1950 and 1955, and probably owes as much to the period of study with Petrassi in Italy and familiarity with the work of a wide range of 20th-century European composers.

[10] A few pieces reflect experimentation or flirtation with serialism, although Leighton's works are more generally typified by a strong sense of lyricism, diatonicism, contrapuntal mastery, chromaticism and rhythmic invention.

He composed a wide range of music (over 100 works, 96 with opus numbers, below) for many different configurations of instruments, often for commissions, specific occasions and performers.

[11] The sacred and liturgical music is widely known and performed regularly across the UK (and extensively recorded, e.g. on Chandos, Hyperion, Naxos, ASV, Priory labels).

[12] Leighton did much to keep alive and transform the Victorian tradition of English choral music, purge its piety and drag it into the (late) twentieth century.

[17] The solo piano music, which ranges from miniatures for younger players to demandingly advanced works, has been recorded by several artists (e.g. Eric Parkin, Peter Wallfisch, Margaret Fingerhut, Angela Brownridge, Stephen Hough),[18] as also the works for organ, which include the celebratory Paean (1966), the monumental duet Martyrs (Op.

5) written while he was a student) appear on various recordings, notably by Raphael Wallfisch; the cello concerto was premiered by Florence Hooton and Sir John Barbirolli in 1956.

Albeit a profoundly spiritual work, this does not lack theatrical flair, including two scherzos, with jazzy touches (taken as menacing by one reviewer), suggesting a composer with a sly sense of humour.