Style
The three components of Farkas's very personal musical language are Italian neoclassicism, Hungarian folk music and twelve-tone serialism. His style is characterized by melodic invention, clear forms, a sense of colour and proportion, and lively and spontaneous rhythm.
"Sándor Jemnitz, the only Hungarian pupil of Schoenberg, writes about one of my concerts: "... It is as if the lure of resistance aroused his creative instinct. His versatile mastery recalls the proficiency and skill that the artists of yesteryear put to the service of their high ranking commissioners, complying faithfully with their imposed requirements of genre and style. So what is the true face of Farkas's music? In his youth he chose Respighi as his master. That was not a coincidence but certainly the result of a particular attraction. Probably the gracious and ethereal charm of Latin music corresponded to his profound sensitivity…”. These flattering lines reflect rightly my attraction to Latin elegance. But my major objective is more wide-ranging: my principal aim has always tried to attain for myself a Latin clarity and proportion. I could make this other quotation, taken from Hemingway, my own: "I never put a sentence down on paper until I believe I have so expressed it that it will be clear to anyone". And then there comes the search for something which actually already exists and which just has to be discovered. Like the sculptor who just pulls out of the mass of marble the sculpture it already contains, I try, from the motif, to bring out the most obvious and natural melody line. I seek the form in which the material feels at its best. ".
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