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Annie Glen Broder's The Ride of the RNWMP (i.e., Royal North West Mounted Police) was published in 1906, just two years after the Northwest Mounted Police were awarded their "Royal" appellation. That honour may have occasioned Broder's composition of this work if, as seems likely, it was written a year or two before its publication.
The work appears to have been self-published, since no publishing firm is mentioned on any of the performing parts, and the copyright notice in the bottom margin of the original solo cornet/conductor part includes the name, "A. Glen Broder." The use of the first initial ("A") was evidently meant to mask the fact that the composer was a woman. Except for singers, women were not widely accepted as composers or professional musicians in Canada until later in the twentieth century.
Born in Agra, India and raised in England, Annie Glen Broder (1857?-1937) was a pupil of Sir Arthur Sullivan and Sir John Stainer at the Royal College of Music in London. She pursued a career as a concert pianist in England, performing frequently as an accompanist on vocal recitals. She published a manual on How to Accompany (London: R. Cocks, 1893), and eventually taught at the Royal Academy of Music in London, at Dublin University, and at Oxford University. She was also a music critic for several British periodicals and newspapers, and, in addition, published poetry and essays on music. Her small output as a composer seems to have been limited to a handful of vocal and choral works, and this composition for band.
In 1902, Broder emigrated from England, settling in Calgary a year later. There she became a prominent member of the musical community, teaching piano and voice, serving as a music critic for the Calgary News-Telegram and later the Calgary Herald, contributing reviews and articles to other Canadian papers, including the Winnipeg Free...