Swing Song and Other Forgotten Treasures: Ethel Barns

I first came across Ethel Barns (1873-1948) in 2018, when I was involved in preparing a festival of chamber music by women composers of the Academy, then an unknown field for me. We were looking particularly for string music, and Barns, I discovered, was a violinist-composer who studied at the Academy in the 1880s and wrote an extensive oeuvre, from orchestral works including violin concertos, to sonatas to miniatures, many of which she played herself and which gained favourable reviews at the time. She was clearly no slouch, given she studied with the famously selective Sauret for violin, plus Ebenezer Prout and Frederick Westlake. Indeed, she gained high praise for both her piano and violin playing; she performed Beethoven’s fourth concerto in 1892, although she was better-known as a violinist. An 1896 review sums up:

“I well remember Miss Ethel Barns in short frocks and long hair, when she was doing the “ infant prodigy “ business as violinist. You would scarcely recognise that little girl in the very graceful young lady who on Saturday night “made music for us,” as Svengali would say, at the Assembly Rooms. If she was admirable as child violinist, she can boast now the mastery of technique and grace of execution that comes from a sympathetic ear, allied to the soul of the artist.”

As Barns had to retire from playing for a time due to ill health around 1908-10, she later became better known as a composer – this rather confused quote from a 1907 article in The Bystander amuses me considerably:

“Miss Ethel Barns, the violinist and composer, who produced at the Queen’s Hall Promenade Concert last week her new work for violin and orchestra, shares with Miss Ethel M. Smyth the distinction of being the only English woman composer.”

This CD is from much earlier, having been released in 2006. It’s a collection of Barns’s works for violin and piano, played by American duo Nancy Schechter and Cary Lewis, including six miniatures and the second and fourth sonatas. I am listening on a streaming service, so unfortunately, the liner notes are not available to me. It would have been fascinating to read of how these particular works were chosen, particularly the sonatas. The fourth and last sonata is disconnected from the first three by that hiatus in Barns’s performing career, and it demonstrates a corresponding change in style and language – more on this later. Certainly standing as she does on the cusp of a sider change of aesthetic, much of Barns’s music could be played either as a memento of earlier ideals, or as an exploration of new possibility. Given the cover art here, it feels as though these performers have chosen the former. It’s a legitimate choice, and their deeply committed interpretation offer a convincing and pleasurable nostalgia. Certainly there is nothing leeser about music that is easy to listen to, that makes our moment of listening a wisp of pleasure upon the senses. Richard Langham Smith puts it well in his review of some Chaminade, although I find neither Chaminade nor Barns quite as sugary-sweet as he does:

“For the altogether delightful easy-listening of the music of Mademoiselle Chaminade the listener should first sweep away the assumption that ‘Salon music’ is a term of derision. Somehow, although Berlin nightclub music of the 20s and 30s is acceptable for intelligent ears, that of French salon music of a generation earlier is not. The sleevenote of Eric Parkin’s new CD of Chaminade (Chandos CHAN 8888) - simultaneously released with a disc of Roussel’s piano (CHAN 8887) - rightly draws attention to the sneering tone in her Grove entry. She has a wonderful gift for the easy-melody, and Parkin admirably brings out the delight of her sophisticated triflings which often have their roots in the fashionable dance. These pieces may be no more than petit-fours, but how difficult are petit-fours to confection!”

Having said all of this, the recording levels already feel old-fashioned. Not only does Barns know how to write for both instruments, but she understands the relationship very well. I always prefer a much more equal miking for violin and piano, rather than a suggestion of the idea that a piano is there for support of the star turn (and the performance itself does not uphold this way of thinking, either). Certainly it means that the shared melodic lines that Barns enjoys and frequently writes don’t always work on the plane that to my ears at least, she clearly intends. 

Most of the works on this album, with the exception of the Polonaise, are from later in Barns’s output, i.e. after 1900 – the excpetion is the Polonaise of 1893. First on the album is Chanson Gracieuse of 1904, rather fascinatingly described in a contemporary review as “engrossing”, not a word often associated with the world of the miniature. 

This is closely followed by two more short works, both with subtitles: Danse Negre (1909) and Swing Song, probably Barns’s most popular piece, accruing several arrangements after its publication in 1907. This work particularlydemonstrates Barns’s ability to subvert expectation. Rather than the return to the melody one expects after the first iteration, the music swings off in a different harmonic direction. This is music well-directed at the amateur market that will purchase the scores, apparently simple enough technically, but with musical acuity that need a more experienced hand really to speak. There is a rather lovely description of an American school assembly in 1931 using this piece for a tableau effect:

“The Swing,” by Ethel Barns, was a charming garden scene with one of the girls in the swing and the class members standing about swaying in perfect rhythm to the music.”

Idylle Pastorale separates the two sonatas. It was premiered in a concert in one of the chamber music series run by Barns with her husband Charles Phillips in November 1908, while Chant Elegiaque in 1905 was considered “well-wrought and effective” but “would probably gain from a little compression”. 

The sonatas themselves at times borrow from something of the same easy-listening aesthetic, but on a much grander scale, but also at times explore new dimensions. There is an assured grip on form and proportion, and the harmonic arrival points are much further away in a more mountainous landscape. They are meaty stuff; again, I am reminded of Chaminade and her C Minor piano sonata that takes the late-nineteenth century piano to the limits of its endurance. In the Barns, both violin and piano seize the music and throw it at the audience, demanding attention. “Keeping still – both outwardly and inwardly – was something desired by nature in the female child,”, said Hedwig Dohm in 1908, but Barns ignores such strictures. Is this a reason for why women’s music vanishes after their death – a way of reimposing the silence they refused for themselves?

Here is the recording of Swing Song from the album.