Hormoz Farhat

Hormoz Farhat (; 9 August 1928 – 16 August 2021) was an Iranian-American composer and ethnomusicologist who spent much of his career in Dublin, Ireland. An emeritus professor of music, he was a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. Described by the Irish Times as a “gifted and distinctive composer of contemporary classical music,” his compositions include orchestral, concertante, piano and choral music, as well string quartets and chamber works. He also wrote numerous film scores, including that of Dariush Mehrjui’s 1969 film The Cow. His father Ebrahim Farat was a senior official at the Persian Ministry of Finance married to his mother Sedique. According to Farhat himself, his early exposure to Iranian music was limited to his father occasionally playing the tar. Instead, he recalls that his ““early musical outlook was mainly western”, later filtered through the country’s radio station that was established in 1939. Farhat later moved to the United States and received a BA in music from the University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA (1953), an MA in composition from Mills College, California (1955), and a PhD in composition and ethnomusicology from UCLA (1965). He studied composition