BIOGRAPHY
Ethel Barns was admitted to the Royal Academy of Music in London at the age of thirteen, where she pursued studies in violin, composition, and piano. Her principal teachers included Emilie Sauret in violin, Ebenezer Prout in composition, and Frederick Westlake in piano. Barns demonstrated exceptional ability as a violinist and made her performance debut with a concerto by Louis Spohr.

By the age of seventeen, Barns had established a reputation as both a performer and composer. In 1891, she composed and performed her Romance for Violin and Piano, marking an early example of her work as both composer and interpreter. She subsequently began presenting her compositions regularly at concert venues throughout London, establishing a career that combined performance with composition.

Barns married pianist Charles Phillips, with whom she established the Barns-Phillips Chamber Concerts. These performances provided an important platform for Barns to present her own compositions alongside works from the broader chamber repertoire. Her compositional output focused primarily on the violin, although she also composed works for solo piano and orchestra. Among her most substantial contributions are five violin sonatas, two of which have survived and remain available today.

During the later part of her career, Barns became an active and distinguished member of the Society of Women Musicians, an organization founded in 1911 to support and promote women working in the musical profession. She continued both composing and performing into the 1920s, contributing to the growing visibility of women as professional composers and instrumentalists in Britain.