Cantata lirica

In 1941, I took over as director of the Choir of the National Theatre in Cluj. The widow of Jenő Dsida, a Transylvanian poet of genius who died at the age of thirty-one, worked as a secretary at the theatre. She told me a lot about her husband and offered me some of his books which, at the time, were hard to find.

One of the poems of Dsida inspired me, in 1945, to write a cantata for mixed voices and orchestra, the “Cantata lirica”. The cantata evokes the beauty of an ineffable love which flowers once beside the Fountain of Saint John near Cluj and then slowly disappears; like youth also slowly fades away. — Ferenc Farkas

This work has six movements distributed symmetrically. After an instrumental introduction, the 2nd, 4th and 6th movements, slow and contemplative in character, alternate with the liveliness of the 3rd and 5th parts. Symmetry also in the exploitation of the instrumental motif of the introduction and that of the chorus in the 2nd movement, these two elements reappearing in the finale.

The text is illustrated by the music down to the smallest details… The evocation of this lost love alternates between sadness and cheerfulness to reach its climax in the 5th movement whose music is jubilant and full of euphoria. The magnificent lament of the 4th movement is one of the most beautiful melodies in minor mode of which Ferenc Farkas has the secret.