Violins to honour war poets at Wilfred Owen Festival

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The second Wilfred Owen Festival will take place in the war poet’s home town of Oswestry, UK, from 15 to 23 March 2025. At the festival’s opening event, luthier Steve Burnett will present the town with five instruments inspired by Owen and other figures from the First World War. All the instruments were made with wood from a sycamore tree taken from the grounds of the former Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh. It was here that Owen was treated for shell shock, and where he met fellow war poet Siegfried Sassoon.

Burnett originally crafted the ‘Wilfred Owen Violin’ in 2014 to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War. ‘Now is the most fitting time to realise this idea,’ he told The Strad at the time. ‘Inside the violin are the words of Owen’s pre-war poem, “Written in a Wood, September 1910”. We have chosen a limb from a sycamore tree growing alongside a lovely copper beech tree at Craiglockhart and this will make this a poignant statement of the sacrifices of that generation.’

The Siegfried Sassoon violin followed soon after, and Burnett then made a third violin for author and poet Robert Graves, who met with Owen and Sassoon in Edinburgh. He has also made a cello dedicated to doctors W.H.R. Rivers and A.J. Brock, who worked at the Craiglockhart Hospital, and a viola for the hospital matron Margaret McBean. All the instruments have been played at concerts and events across Europe relating to the themes of peace and reconciliation, as well as events linked to environmental concerns. 

Burnett told The Strad he saw the instruments as ’a complete musical voice of a living tree, highlighting “The Pity of War” poetry… and a potent symbol of peace, reconciliation and friendship through the power of music’. Regarding the tree itself, he said: ’The limb removed from the sycamore was sizeable, and I just managed to get a two-piece back for the cello, with all ribs and necks for the instruments made from the same branch. The instrument fronts were all made from spruce, and I made a number of pegs and fittings from English boxwood.’

Following the handover ceremony, the instruments will be played that evening at a folk concert at Oswestry Cricket Club. They can also be heard on 23 March at the ‘Wilfred Owen Classical Music Concert for Peace & Reconciliation’, at the town’s Christ Church.

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