Leighton Lucas

rdf:langString Leighton Lucas

rdf:langString Leighton Lucas

rdf:langString Leighton Lucas (5 January 1903 – 1 November 1982) was an English composer and conductor. Born into a musical family (his father, Clarence Lucas, was also a noted composer and his mother Clara Asher-Lucas a concert pianist), he began his career as a dancer for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (1918–21). He became a ballet conductor at 19, and in 1941 became musical director of the Ballet Guild, a wartime company for which he formed first a quintet, later an orchestra. He also worked as an arranger for Jack Hylton's orchestra between c.1926 and 1930. Lucas was a self-taught composer of religious works and film music He is particularly noted for his film compositions, including the scores for Target for Tonight (1941), Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1950), Ice-Cold in Alex (1958) and the incidental music for The Dam Busters (based on the title march by Eric Coates). His first major composition to receive recognition was the Partita for piano and chamber orchestra, broadcast in 1934 with the composer conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and his mother Clara Asher-Lucas as the solo pianist. Benjamin Britten described it as "very interesting – especially the quite lovely Sarabande." Lucas's Sinfonia Brevis (1936?) for horn and 11 instruments may be one of the earliest British scores to incorporate Balinese gamelan effects. It was also heard by Britten, who went on to use such effects in his music from Paul Bunyan. Ballet de la Reine (1949, revised 1957) is a six movement suite taken from the sketches of an unperformed ballet, Pavan for Mary, which was originally intended for the Edinburgh Ballet Club. The music looks back to Elizabethan music forms (similarly to Peter Warlock's Capriol Suite) while also retaining a French flavour (because Mary, Queen of Scots spent her childhood in France).