FARKAS, FERENC  

The Hungarian composer Ferenc Farkas was initially a pianist. He later studied composition at the Budapest Academy of Music, and in Rome under Respighi. He spent time in Africa and Spain, and two further years abroad, working as a composer for film studios in Vienna and in Copenhagen, before returning to Hungary in 1936. There he established himself as an influential teacher and as a composer who was able to bring to Hungarian music a wider perspective, through the influence of Respighi and the latter's own teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov. Like Respighi Farkas has made occasional use of rarer instruments, including the baryton, the instrument of Haydn's patron, and, in a prolific career as a composer, wrote music in many genres, with song settings in a variety of languages, a reflection of his literary interests.