Happily Ever After

Happily Ever After examines marriage as a political institution rather than a romantic ideal. In many societies marriage is not a freely chosen act for women but a socially enforced transition into a system that regulates their bodies, labour, sexuality and voice. Marketed as fulfilment and happiness, it often functions instead as a mechanism of control. The work draws a parallel between wedding and funeral rituals — both collective ceremonies that mark irreversible thresholds and demand submission to inherited norms. For many women, marriage becomes a form of social death: the erasure of identity disguised as celebration. The title is therefore used ironically, exposing the violence hidden beneath the promise of “happily ever after.”

Fragments of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March appear throughout the piece, hummed from memory by the players — the way a distracted guest hums at a reception — and distorted until they dissolve into breath, vocal fry, noise and physical strain. Extended techniques foreground the body as a site of endurance rather than pleasure, reflecting how patriarchal structures normalise discomfort and silence as forms of discipline. The two hummers never synchronise; they drift apart deliberately. The piece ends with three measured silences of four, five and six seconds during which no one may release their posture.

Rather than offering resolution, Happily Ever After refuses the fantasy it critiques. The work asks whose voices are lost in order for this ritual to continue — and what must be buried for happiness to appear intact. It was premiered by Ensemble Multilatérale on 16 July 2022, and revised in 2026 for bass flute, bass clarinet, percussion, piano, cello and double bass for Schallfeld Ensemble’s performance at Wigmore Hall, London, on 3 October 2026.