The voice of the soprano Sarah Leonard, who has died aged 71 from a brain tumour, was familiar to aficionados of contemporary music for its ability to negotiate the stratospheric territory of the most taxing scores. It became known to a much wider audience through two particular recordings.
The first was Michael Nyman’s Memorial, premiered in 1985 to commemorate the deaths of 39 football fans at that year’s European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus at the Heysel Stadium, Brussels. Above the Nyman Band’s pounding, funereal beat, Leonard was required to voice a long series of notes, many of them an octave above the stave. The bizarre, gut-wrenching result acquired cult status when it became part of the soundtrack of Peter Greenaway’s film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989). The second recording was of part of John Harle’s Silencium (2011), used as the theme tune for the BBC crime drama series Silent Witness, in which the voice repeatedly intones an ethereal chant-like melody rising to a top A.
