At first blush, there might not seem to be too close a connection between the art song and the horrors of war.

The intimate music that results from a composer’s sensitive setting of a poet’s words would seem to be something more related to the elegant salons of the 19th and early 20th centuries than the bleakness of the battlefield.

That impression may well be dispelled by the upcoming concert, War’s Embers, by noted local tenor Christopher Simmons and pianist Greg Caisley (Saturday, Nov. 7, 8 p.m., White Rock Community Church, 15280 Pacific Ave.; Sunday, Nov. 8, 3 p.m., Langley United Church, 5673 200 Ave., Langley).

For a half hour before each performance, there will be a pre-concert discussion in which the busy Simmons (best known locally for his operatic and light operatic appearances with wife Debra Da Vaughn) will talk about the significance of this collection of songs for Remembrance Day – all written by composers who served their countries in times of war.

But anyone who listens to Simmons sing George Butterworth’s melodic interpretation of poems from Arthur Houseman’s A Shropshire Lad will have an even more poignant realization that the talent of this composer, considered the most promising British musician of his generation, was stilled, not by old age, but by a sniper’s bullet on the Somme in 1916.

War touched the work of most of the other selected composers, Simmons said.

These include Ralph Vaughn Williams (Silent Noon) who was a stretcher bearer and later an artillery officer in the First World War (and paid the price in hearing loss due to gunfire) and Ivor Gurney (Severn Meadows) who was damaged physically and mentally by the same war (a victim of poison gas, he died in a mental hospital at age 47, but amongst his legacy is a 1919 collection of poems that supply the title for Simmons’ presentation).

The concert is also a reminder that both Samuel Barber (With Rue My Heart Is Laden) and John Kander (of Broadway’s famous songwriting duo Kander and Ebb) were World War Two veterans – Barber in the U.S. Army Air Corps and Kander in both the U.S. Army and the U.S. Merchant Marine.

Kander’s contribution is a touching setting of an American Civil War letter from Major Sullivan Ballou to his wife, written just a week before he was killed in action at the Battle of Bull Run.

Even though Gerald Finzi was too young to have served in the First World War he was drafted into military transport service in World War Two, as well he opened his house to a number of German and Czech refugees, while Butterworth’s contemporary, Sir Arthur Somervell, although not a combatant, also wrote settings for some of Houseman’s A Shropshire Lad particularly relating to the perspectives of soldiers in the Boer War, and those who watched them go off to battle.

The concert will also, of course, serve as a showcase of the glories of the art song – an idiom to which Simmons is particularly attached.

“There’s something magical about the coming together of the talent of the composer and the talent of the poet,” he said.

Above all, Simmons believes the weekend’s concerts, for which proceeds will go to White Rock branch of the Royal Canadian Legion (and the Langley branch, and Langley United Church for Sunday’s performance) will serve both as reminder of beautiful music from the past and a meditation on the sacrifices of war.

“My hope is that people who’ve lived through times of war will see this as a way of honouring those who served and those died, and also a time for thinking of things they may have witnessed,” he said.