The Birthday Party

Ethel Bilsland's The Birthday Party, arranged for solo piano by Samantha Ege. Available to print instantly at home in digital sheet music format.

From Samantha Ege's groundbreaking album Four Women: Music for solo piano by Florence Price, Vítězslava Kaprálová, Ethel Bilsland and Margaret Bonds. The album celebrates the music of four 20th Century female composers, largely ignored by history.

The Birthday Party is a collection of six simple miniatures written by Bilsland for her young nephews; they provide a glimpse of a hidden, untold history of female composers from that era.  

As well as a highly accomplised composer, musician and soprano, Bilsland was a professor at the Royal Academy of Music. She composed for voice, piano, chamber ensembles and orchestras, but remarkably The Birthday Party is her only published work to date.  

Samantha Ege explains: "I feel that these miniatures represent the sacrifices that women often have to make in order to fulfil certain roles". 

Released by Wave Theory Records, featuring specially comissioned artwork by Jennifer Binnie.