Book Projects
The largest ongoing book project that Justin Vickers is completing is The Aldeburgh Festival: A History of the Britten and Pears Era, 1948–1986 (The Boydell Press, forthcoming). He is also writing Benjamin Britten and the Night, looking at the preponderance of the nighttime across Britten's compositional career.
Vickers celebrates collaboration. He has edited five academic books to date and has several more in the pipeline that will see publication in the coming years. He is also editing Songs 1900–1950 for Musica Britannica, the first volume of twentieth-century English songs in the storied collection of the series, the “Music of a Nation” in Great Britain. Likewise, he has contributed to a number of books centered generally around British music since 1900.
The Aldeburgh Festival: A History of the Britten and Pears Era, 1948–1986 (The Boydell Press, forthcoming)
The first history of Britten’s great entrepreneurial endeavor leading up to the deaths of its founders. Vickers positions the Festival’s first four decades in the context of unprecedented cultural shifts in the UK, constant financial precarity, and a dizzying array of the world’s greatest performers and performances.
“When dreams do show thee me”: Benjamin Britten and the Night (forthcoming)
This book explores the profound influence of nighttime themes across Britten’s compositional life. Vickers positions the night culturally and historically and situates Britten’s works within broader cultural discourses, while also offering detailed discussion of his compositions.
Childhood and the Operatic Imaginary since 1900, edited by Joy H. Calico and Justin Vickers (Oxford University Press, 2026)
Opera Studies has neglected its children. Opera scholarship has been complicit in othering children and childhoods, disregarding repertoire for, by, and about children as well as its creators. This volume tilts Opera Studies off its adult-centric axis by focusing on children as characters, creators, performers, and audiences. With a collection of essays that encompass repertoire since 1900 from four continents, Calico and Vickers propose a theory of childhood in Opera Studies, welcoming further critical enquiry into this next important scholarly territory: the confluence of childhood and the operatic imaginary.
Elizabeth Maconchy in Context, edited by Justin Vickers and Lucy Walker (Cambridge University Press, 2026)
Elizabeth Maconchy was one of the most prominent and successful composers of the twentieth century, a champion of contemporary music who composed chamber operas, choral music, orchestral works, a range of compositions and operas for children, and a highly-regarded series of string quartets. This collection explores her life and work, her Irishness and her formative years at the Royal College of Music. It examines her intersections with musical and cultural movements, and the persistent and insidious presence of sexism against which she presented a forceful, often humorous stance. There are chapters devoted to her important friendships with composers and teachers, interactions with broadcasters and festival organisers along with a focused section dedicated to the breadth and depth of Maconchy’s compositions.
Vickers writes about Maconchy’s children’s operas.
Elizabeth Sweeting: The Best and Happiest Days, edited by Philip Reed and Justin Vickers (Bittern Press, 2026)
Reed and Vickers edit Sweeting’s memoir of her first eight seasons as Festival Manager of the Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts — Let's Make a Festival — alongside some three-dozen pieces of correspondence with Benjamin Britten. The volume reveals a managerial powerhouse in the making and the editorial team provide a detailed glimpse into Sweeting’s career beyond Aldeburgh’s shores.
Benjamin Britten in Context, edited by Vicki P. Stroeher and Justin Vickers (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
Benjamin Britten, pianist, conductor, educator, composer of a wide range of music from large-scale operas and choral works to string quartets and songs, is acknowledged as a pivotal figure in mid-twentieth-century Britain. This volume explores the contexts for his multi-faceted career and his engagement with his contemporaries in music, art, literature, and film, British musical institutions, royal and governmental entities, and the church, as well as his ground-breaking projects, philosophical and ideological tenets.
Benjamin Britten Studies: Essays on An Inexplicit Art, edited by Vicki P. Stroeher and Justin Vickers (The Boydell Press, 2017)
Benjamin Britten Studies brings together established authorities and new voices to offer a fresh perspective on previous scholarship models and a re-contextualization of previously held beliefs about Britten. Using the most recent and innovative historical, musicological, sociological, psychological, and theoretical methodologies, the authors take off the ‘protective arm’ around Britten and disclose an unprecedented amount of previously unpublished and disregarded primary source materials.
Vickers scrutinizes the fraught establishing of the English Opera Group (1947) contemporaneous with the founding of the Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts (1948).
Chapters in Multi-Author Volumes
Justin Vickers and Philip Reed, “Introduction” in Elizabeth Sweeting: ‘The Best & Happiest Days’, Justin Vickers and Philip Reed, Editors; Forthcoming, Bittern Press: 2026.
Justin Vickers, [Introduction] “Becoming Real: Remembering Linda Shaver-Gleason” in Linda Shaver-Gleason Memorial Festschrift (Title TBD), Robin Wallace, Editor; Forthcoming, Clemson University Press: 2026.
Justin Vickers, “‘O, for a little courage’: Queens, closets, and cover-ups” in Linda Shaver-Gleason Memorial Festschrift (Title TBD), Robin Wallace, Editor; Forthcoming, Clemson University Press: 2026.
Justin Vickers and Joy H. Calico, “Childhood and the Operatic Imaginary” in Childhood and the Operatic Imaginary since 1900, Justin Vickers and Joy H. Calico, Editors; Oxford University Press: 2026.
Justin Vickers, “Entertainments, the Miraculous, and a Place of Refuge in Benjamin Britten’s Children’s Operas” in Childhood and the Operatic Imaginary since 1900, Justin Vickers and Joy H. Calico, Editors; Oxford University Press: 2026.
Justin Vickers and Lucy Walker, “‘Difficult for a Woman’: The Many Twentieth-Century Contexts of Elizabeth Maconchy” in Elizabeth Maconchy in Context, Justin Vickers and Lucy Walker, Editors; Forthcoming, Cambridge University Press: 2026.
Justin Vickers, “Elizabeth Maconchy’s Operas for Children” in Elizabeth Maconchy in Context, Justin Vickers and Lucy Walker, Editors; Forthcoming, Cambridge University Press: 2026.
Justin Vickers and Vicki P. Stroeher, “Introduction: Positioning Britten” in Benjamin Britten in Context, Justin Vickers and Vicki P. Stroeher, Editors; Cambridge University Press: 2022.
Justin Vickers, “Peter Pears” in Benjamin Britten in Context, Justin Vickers and Vicki P. Stroeher, Editors; Cambridge University Press: 2022.
Justin Vickers, “Festival Culture in the British Isles” in Benjamin Britten in Context, Justin Vickers and Vicki P. Stroeher, Editors; Cambridge University Press: 2022.
Justin Vickers, “Eric Crozier” in Benjamin Britten in Context, Justin Vickers and Vicki P. Stroeher, Editors; Cambridge University Press: 2022.
Justin Vickers, “Pears as Illuminator, Interpreter, and Inspiration” in Benjamin Britten in Context, Justin Vickers and Vicki P. Stroeher, Editors; Cambridge University Press: 2022.
Justin Vickers, “Britten’s Donne Meditation” in Literary Britten: Words and Music in Britten’s Vocal Works, Kate Kennedy, Editor; The Boydell Press: 2018.
Justin Vickers, “An Empire Built on Shingle: Britten, the English Opera Group, and the Aldeburgh Festival” in Benjamin Britten Studies: Essays on An Inexplicit Art, Justin Vickers and Vicki P. Stroeher, Editors; The Boydell Press: 2017.
Justin Vickers, “Amanuensis of the Sea: Peter Maxwell Davies’s Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 and the Antarctic Symphony” in The Sea in the British Musical Imagination, Christopher Scheer and Eric Saylor, Editors; Boydell & Brewer, England: 2015.