"When You Translated Troubadour Songs in Székesfehérvár...": Ferenc Farkas' s Encounters with Sándor Weöres

• Published in: Magyar zene Vol. 53; no. 4; pp. 388 - 402
• Main Author: Kelemen, Éva
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Hungarian
• Published: Budapest 01.11.2015
• Subjects: Collaboration; Composers; Farkas, Ferenc; Friendship; Poets; Settings; Weöres, Sándor
• ISSN: 0025-0384

In the musical output of Ferenc Farkas an important role was played by vocal music, of which there are about four hundred works. He drew from one or more poems by each of around a hundred Hungarian poets in his songs and choral works. These stretch from Balassi to Jenô Dsida, and from the Latin poems of Janus Pannonius through Petôfi, Babits and Lôrinc Szabó right up to Sándor Weöres, with whom he had an artistic friendship that lasted more or less half a century. Their first creative encounter was initiated by the composer at the beginning of the 1940s when he took three stanzas from the seven sections of the poet's "Maláj ábránd" ("Malaysian Dream") and made them into a song with piano accompaniment. Their personal aquaintance was deepened when they were together every day in Székesfehérvár in the second half of the 1940s, becoming a friendship that lasted for decades and only to be broken by the poet's death. Their artistic creative contact however carried on: the series of Farkas's Weöres compositions closes with his choral works and songs from the middle of the 1990s. This study summarizes the most important events of the years 1946-48 spent by the two artists in Székesfehérvár, and presents a few moments from their personal life together based on documents in the Farkas estate in the National Széchényi Library. The genesis and reception of the composer's song cycle "Gyümölcskosár" ("Fruit Basket") are described, using so far partly unknown sources from the estate. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]