Composer David Little is not yet 30 and is still working on his Ph.D., yet his list of classical works is as long as your arm. If his latest, "Soldier Songs," premiered on Friday by Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble at City Theatre on the South Side, is any indication, quality equals quantity in a big way.

Commissioned by PNME and composed over a span of 18 months, the work explores the dichotomous relationship of war and our society. "We live in a culture where violence thrives," Little writes, "where our children play war games and pretend to kill one another for fun." The 50-minute cycle is a semitheatrical piece that follows the experience of war from the consequence-less age of a child through the age of a warrior, where the consequences are real and severe, on to the reflective stage of a veteran.

Little wrote the texts based on interviews with some half-dozen military personnel. To add impact, although the music was powerful enough, slides and videos were projected onto a large upstage screen.

Little's compositional language is eclectic and diverse, encompassing 19th-century Romanticism and polytonality, percussive counterpoint and musical theatre lyricism, semi-tone tuning and diatonic harmonies. The only selection on the program, "Soldier Songs" is a challenging work in both musical material and subject matter. "In all honesty I can say that this is not a piece that many professional ensembles would have the courage to tackle," says Little. Led by artistic director Kevin Noe, the PNME handled it masterfully.

"Part One: Child," begins with "Real American Hero" in which a child gleefully sings of "killing all the bad guys with the funny names" while playing with action figures. "Boom! Bang! Dead!" depicts a teenager playing a violent video game, with the actual, rapid-paced game on the projection screen. The frenetic tempo is interrupted by a Sondheim-like passage in which the teen muses about not really being harmed if he loses. The work continues with such titles as "Counting the Days," "Every Town Has a Wall" and "Old Friends with Large Weapons."

"Soldier Songs" is not a loosely connected cycle, but a dramatic, theatrical solo cantata that builds to a heartrending climax with the third and fourth songs of "Part Two: Warrior." In "Hollywood Ending," a soldier bewails his helplessness in the aftermath of a car bombing. It is one of the more troubling scenes of the show, accompanied by photos from the actual event: graphically gruesome shots of the death and destruction.

"Hollywood Ending" segues into "Steel Rain," a military term for incoming ordnance. The text is a spoken, verbatim monologue from the soldier who described the car bombing. The musicians crawl off the smoke-filled stage, as though escaping a fearsome barrage. Jagged, dissonant recorded music builds to a thunderous level and a protracted, brilliantly conceived light show left no doubt as to dramatic content.

With each of the 11 songs as gripping as the last, the cycle was a signature vehicle for bass-baritone Timothy Jones. He adroitly adapted his masterful technique and flawless diction to the core of each tune. He conveyed the brashness of "Boom! Bang! Dead!," the roboticism of "Still Life with Tank and iPod" and the angst of "Two Marines," which began as a painful lament and morphed into a glowing paean to peace activism.