12 Facts About Hormoz Farhat

Hormoz Farhat was a Persian-American composer and ethnomusicologist who spent much of his career in Dublin, Ireland.

Hormoz Farhat wrote numerous film scores, including that of Dariush Mehrjui's 1969 film The Cow.

Hormoz Farhat was born on 9 August 1928, in Tehran, the capital city of what was then Imperial State of Persia, but renamed in 1935 as Iran.

Hormoz Farhat's father Ebrahim Farat was a senior official at the Persian Ministry of Finance married to his mother Sedique.

The Farhat family had descended from a long line of "secularised Muslims", many of whom were civil servicemen like Ebrahim.

Hormoz Farhat later moved to the United States and received a BA in music from the University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA, an MA in composition from Mills College, California, and a PhD in composition and ethnomusicology from UCLA.

Hormoz Farhat studied composition with Darius Milhaud, Lukas Foss, and Roy Harris.

In 1959, Hormoz Farhat founded the Music of Persia Performance Group at UCLA.

Hormoz Farhat was vice-chancellor at Farabi University in Tehran.

Hormoz Farhat moved to Northern Ireland in 1979 as a senior research fellow at Queen's University, Belfast and then to the Republic of Ireland as the chair, professor and head of the School of Music in Trinity College Dublin.

Hormoz Farhat was a guest lecturer at numerous institutions including universities of Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Durham, Amsterdam, Cologne, Warsaw, Ljubljana, Copenhagen, Stockholm and The Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC Hormoz Farhat was the external examiner at the University of Durham School of Music and the Royal Irish Academy of Music.

In 1970, Hormoz Farhat was awarded The Golden Plaque for Best Music for the score of Mehrjui's internationally acclaimed film Gaav.