The six songs of War Wedding chronicle the sensuous wedding night of two young lovers set against the backdrop of a savage and vicious war. After they part at daybreak, the young soldier dies from his wounds, and his bride is left alone. The cycle was commissioned by, and is lovingly dedicated to, the American tenor, Justin Vickers,. During his doctoral dissertation research on Michael Tippett’s The Heart’s Assurance, Justin encountered the poetry of Alun Lewis, which he describes as “saturated in war, and rich with grief.” When he introduced me to the text, I knew immediately that it would translate perfectly into a song cycle. It was awarded the Helen L. Weiss Award for vocal compositions from the University of Pennsylvania, and received its premiere as part of the Voice of This Generation concerts, presented as part of the Philly Fringe Live Arts Festival in September 2011.

Alun Lewis (1915-1944) was one of the great British writers of the Second World War. Born in industrial South Wales he went to university and became a teacher before enlisting in the army despite pacifist misgivings about the war. Already published, becoming a soldier galvanized Lewis’s writing and he published a story collection, The Last Inspection, and two poetry collections, Raiders’ Dawn and Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets. The latter was published posthumously, following his death in a shooting accident on active service in Burma. By this time his critical and popular reputation were established and Lewis’s writing has continued to fascinate for almost seventy years.