- Roy Agnew
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name = Roy Agnew
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birth_date = 23 August 1891
birth_place =Sydney ,Australia
death_date = 12 November 1944
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nationality =Australia n
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occupation = Composer, concert pianist, teacher
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footnotes =Roy Ewing "Robert" Agnew (23 August 1891 - 12 November 1944) was an
Australia ncomposer andpianist . He has been called the most outstanding Australian composer of the early twentieth century.Hinson p. 6.]Early life and education
Agnew was born in
Sydney on 23 August 1891, the son of Samuel Agnew, acordial manufacturer, and his wife Maria Jane, née Miller. Agnew taught himself piano at an early age. He attended Chatswood and Hornsby public schools, and received his first formal music training from Emanuel de Beaupuis, an Italian pianist then residing in Sydney. He received some further teaching from Daisy Miller and Sydney Moss, and later also briefly studied composition underAlfred Hill at the NSW Conservatorium of Music. He began working as a piano teacher in Marrickville in 1911.By this time, Agnew was already writing "strikingly original works" which abandoned "the limitations of key and tonal relationship".Australian Dictionary of Biography Online.] The first piece of his music to be published was "Australian Forest Pieces for Piano" in 1913; however, his music did not receive much public attention until the internationally renowned pianist
Benno Moiseiwitsch gave a recital of his works "Deirdre's Lament" and "Dance of the Wild Men" at aSydney Town Hall matinee. Partly through the generosity of friends and supporters, Agnew was then able to travel toLondon in 1923 to study composition and orchestration with Gerard Williams andCyril Scott at theRoyal College of Music .Career
While in London, Agnew gave recitals of works by contemporary composers such as
Claude Debussy andIgor Stravinsky , while his own "Fantasie Sonata" was premiered in London in 1927 byWilliam Murdoch . Augener Ltd. of London began to publish his pieces, and in the United States he also found a publisher inArthur P. Schmidt ofNew York .In 1928 Agnew returned to Sydney, where he gave a number of recitals of his own music, and his "poem for orchestra and voice", "The Breaking of the Drought", was performed with Alfred Hill conducting. In 1931 he left again for Britain, where he gave performances of his own works at the
Lyceum , at the George Woodhouse Studio in London, and inGlasgow . He also gave a number of performances for theBBC .After remaining in Britain for three years, Agnew returned home again in December 1934 for a tour sponsored by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), and in September of that year, he advertised a series of private lessons in "Practical Composition" and in "General Interpretation and the art of Pedalling" in
Melbourne . In May of the following year he gave two radio recitals of his works. A number of his works were also performed and orchestrated in Australia by other musicians at this time.In January 1938, Agnew was engaged by the ABC to compere a weekly program on contemporary music, dubbed the "Modern and Contemporary Composers' Session". Agnew featured composers such as Webern, Berg, Busoni, Szymanowski, Debussy, Stravinsky and Scriabin, and sometimes performed the pieces himself. The program became so popular it ran for five years. He also compered a second program "Music Through the Ages: The Piano and its Composers" featuring mostly classical composers such as
Giles Farnaby ,Domenico Scarlatti , Mozart and Chopin, which Agnew played himself.In 1939 he won first prize for his "Sonata Ballade" from the Musical Association of New South Wales, which he later recorded for Columbia. In 1943, he recorded fifty of his own compositions for the ABC. While these recordings remain a valuable record of his own playing, they are somewhat marred by the fact that the limited technology of the period forced him to hurry over some passages in order to fit them onto tape.
In 1944, Agnew's last major work, the "Sonata Legend (Capricornia)" was publicly performed for the first time by
Alexander Sverjensky at the Sydney Conservatorium. In February of that year, Agnew accepted a position at the Conservatorium.He developed a warm relationship with the piano teacher
Winifred Burston , who introduced his works to her students such asLarry Sitsky andRichard Meale .Personal life
Agnew married Kathleen Olive, youngest daughter of R. E. O'Connor, at St Mary's Cathedral on 8 November 1930. The marriage was childless. He has been described as a quiet, gentle and unassuming man, for whom life outside his music, his home and his garden "was not very concrete or real". He also enjoyed surfing and walking.
He died unexpectedly on 12 November 1944 from
septicaemia following a bout oftonsilitis . His estate upon his death was valued at a modest £547.Music
Agnew, one of the few Australian composers of his generation to achieve international recognition,Grove Online.] has been described as "the most outstanding of the early twentieth century Australian composers". The "archetypal pianist-composer",Sitsky and Martin. ] the overwhelming body of his work was written for solo piano, with only occasional ventures into orchestral or other forms.
All critics have noted the influence of Scriabin on Agnew's music, while others have variously detected affinities with John Ireland, Ravel, Debussy, Liszt, Busoni, Cyril Scott,
Frank Bridge andArnold Bax . The English critic SirNeville Cardus notes that regardless of his influences however, Agnew "made everything second nature to his essentially lyrical imagination". Cardus also observes that he had a "sure feeling" for atmospherics, especially in his smaller works.Agnew's most important works are generally considered to be his six piano sonatas (it appears that Agnew actually wrote eight, but two early examples have been lost). The overall style of these has been described as "highly pianistic, full of fantasy and colour, and technically demanding", while incorporating "a forward-looking harmonic vocabulary".
Larry Sitsky has noted that Agnew's four later sonatas (excluding the more recently discovered "Sonata 1929") have an unusual progression: the first has four central musical themes, the second three, the third two, and the last, the "Sonata Legend", is monothematic. Each has its particular appeal and challenges, but Sitsky suggests that in addition to this progression "toward an economy of themes and expression", Agnew's work also grew more conservative as he grew older. Sitsky feels this may have been due to the unconscious influence of the conservatism of the Australian musical establishment of the era. In addition to the sonatas, Sitsky also names the "preludes and poems" as "important additions to the Australian repertoire" which "make fine impressions in concert programmes".While other early twentieth century Australian composers were "discovered" and rehabilitated in the 1970s and after by a new generation of Australian critics, Agnew's relatively early death in 1944 made him the "forgotten figure" of the period. Only in the 1990s did his music begin to attract attention once again. His contribution is now widely acknowledged, and the Australian music publishers Keys Press recently undertook to publish his complete works.
elected works
Orchestral
"The Breaking of the Drought", 1928
Piano
"Sonatas"
"Symphonic Poéme""Sonata 1929" and "Symphonic Poème" were unnamed by Agnew. They were discovered in Agnew's papers after his death by
Larry Sitsky who has tentatively suggested these names. See Sitsky and Martin.] "Fantasie Sonata" (1927) "Sonata 1929" (1929) "Sonata Poème" (1936) "Sonata Ballade" (1939) "Sonata Legend (Capricornia)" (1949)"Other"
"Australian Forest Pieces" (1913) "Dance of the Wild Men" (1919) "Deidre's Lament" (1922) "Poème Tragique" (1922) "Rhapsody" (1928) "Rabbit Hill" (1928) "Youthful Fancies" (1936) "Holiday Suite" (1937) - Also some duets, and over 60 other solo pieces
ongs
"Beloved stoop down thro' the clinging dark" (Z. Cross Smith) (1913) "O moonlight deep and tender" (Lowell) (1913) "Dirge" (1924) "Dusk" (R. Williams) (1926) "Infant Joy" (W. Blake) (1926) "Two Songs without Words" (for violin and clarinet, 1928) "Beauty" (J. Masefield) (1935) "The flowers of sleep" (V. Daley) (1935)
Footnotes
Recurring references
* [http://www.amcoz.com.au/composers/composer.asp?id=266 Roy Agnew] , Australian Music Centre website.
* [http://www.musicaustralia.org/apps/MA?function=showDetail¤tMapsRecord=ANL:MA~712002&itemSeq=5&total=152&&returnFunction=searchResults&scope=scope&simpleTerm=nsw&sessionId=reuseSearch013D4F2D3934A1BC9BDC0B17299908D71212613187964 Roy E. Agnew] , Music Australia website.
* [http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A070018b.htm Agnew, Roy Ewing (Robert)] , Australian Dictionary of Biography Online.
*Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians Online (subscription required).
*Sitsky, Larry & Martin, Ruth Lee (2005): "Australian Piano Music of the Twentieth Century", Greenwood Publishing Group, pp. 20-30, ISBN 0313322864. [http://books.google.com.au/books?id=3g8PGmIHm3cC&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=+%22roy+agnew%22&source=web&ots=v2N-f6fkRX&sig=lV-IHL4sdyuBKs8-SY3fSrCmDlI&hl=en#PPA20,M1 Extract] .
*Hinson, Morris (2000): "Guide to the Pianist's Repertoire", Indiana University Press, p. 6, ISBN 0253336465. [http://books.google.com.au/books?id=3fjQGJqPM_MC&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=+%22roy+agnew%22&source=web&ots=Bkfx8p2eyr&sig=FU18fU4k2RCo8xPiNoiehKmRGgM&hl=en Extract] .
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