IDAGIO | Every Living Creature - Choral Music by Kenneth Leighton 748871066724

Featuring

Nina Bennet
Rebecca Lea
Ciara Hendrick
Nick Pritchard
Arielle Leowinger
Madelaine Napier

Clare Loosely
Fiona Clarke
Helena Whitfield
Isobel McIntosh
Ben Byram-Wigfield
Londinium
Finchley Children's Music Group
Kenneth Leighton

Did you know?

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Album & Artwork

The cover image of this album, The Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks, is taken from the 1965 Penguin Book of Animal Verse, which also provided most of the texts for Leighton's Laudes Animantium.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Leighton believed that a composer needs a sense of purpose within society, which he found in church music and music for young people and amateurs, embracing the limitations as beneficial.

Critical Reception

Despite near-universal admiration among musicians for Kenneth Leighton's choral works, several major pieces, including the eight-movement Laudes Animantium, remained unrecorded and even unpublished until this album.

Composer Biography

Kenneth Leighton, the composer, had his formative musical experiences as a chorister at Wakefield Cathedral, which instilled in him a profound conviction that church music mattered.

Recording & Production

This album includes the first recorded performances of Kenneth Leighton's Laudes Animantium, Lord, When the Sense of Thy Sweet Grace, London Town, and the original Three Carols of 1948.

Compositional Technique

Leighton's choral music is characterized by rigorous part-writing, counterpoint, invigorating rhythm, motivic interplay, piquant dissonance, and a deep lyrical instinct.