Educational Congress March was published in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1902. The piece presents an attractive tune reminiscent of those played to accompany silent films. Only three pages in length, the march would be appropriate for an early advanced student. It is marked Con Spirito and is written in 6/8 meter, which gives a piece more dance-like, swing beat that is more prominent and exaggerated than its cut-time cousin. While the general texture of the piece isn’t too dense and there are not too many accidentals, nor there are complex rhythms, the piece still offers a great technical challenge. One of the leading challenges are constant jumps in the left hand accompaniment. The accompaniment is built on tonal harmonies, but the jumps generally occur in the range of two to three octaves, which might be quite difficult to execute due to the meter the piece is written in. Additionally, the melody in the right hand part is written in octaves and often requires it to be played on legato.
Anna Gardner Goodwin (1874 - 1959) was an African American composer of classical music, mainly known for her religious works and marches. Goodwin was born in Augusta, GA in a family of Daniel and Anna Gardner. Her father was recognized as "the March King of Augusta" for playing cornet player and running a Sunday afternoon concert series for black Augustans. It was Anna’s father who inspired her to be a musician herself. Anna Goodwin attended Paine College in Augusta, Georgia and earned a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania to study the “method and supervision of public school music.” She married a reverend and theology professor at Morehouse College, George Goodwin, and assisted him in playing and leading music at the same college. She spent the majority of her adult life teaching and writing music. Her first composition, “Adelene,” was published in 1909 and her last composition, “Freedom to All March,” was performed by the Cicero Band in 1956 to commemorate the Cicero (Illinois) race riots of 1951. Besides a career as a composer and teacher, Goodwin held the position of assistant house director of the Chicago World Young Women's Christian Association in the 1930s.
Sources:
- Anna Gardner Goodwin. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, February 8, 2020. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Gardner_Goodwin.
- Anna Gardner Goodwin, Assistant House Director at the Chicago YWCA. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.newspapers.com/clip/8775150/anna-gardner-goodwin-assistant-h...
- Anna Gardner Goodwin Papers. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/bmrc/view.php?eadid=BMRC.CBMR.GOODWIN
Educational Congress March, by Anna Gardner Goodwin, performed by Anastasiia Pavlenko