AGNEW, ROY (ROBERT) EWING (1891-1944), composer and pianist, was born on 23 August 1891 in Sydney, son of Samuel Agnew, cordial manufacturer, and his wife Maria Jane, née Miller. Educated at Chatswood and Hornsby public schools, he was taught music by Emanuel de Beaupuis, an Italian pianist living in Sydney, then briefly studied composition under Alfred Hill at the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music. By 1911 Agnew was teaching the piano at Marrickville and beginning to compose 'strikingly original works', abandoning 'the limitations of key and tonal relationship'; in 1913 he published Australian Forest Pieces for Piano. His compositions were unknown until Benno Moiseiwitsch played Deirdre's Lament and the Dance of the Wild Men at a matinée at the Sydney Town Hall in 1920 and helped him to find publishers.

In 1923, through the generosity of friends, Agnew went to London where he studied composition and orchestration ...

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Source:

Australian Dictionary of Biography