Philip Farkas was born in Chicago on March 5, 1914 to Emil and Anna Cassidy Farkas. Though not musically gifted themselves, his parents encouraged young Philip to explore music through piano lessons. At age twelve he joined the Boy Scouts and became the troop's bugler until he was fourteen. Around this same time Farkas began playing the tuba in band. In 1927 a streetcar conductor refused to allow him to ride with the tuba on the grounds that he was blocking traffic, and pointed to a fellow passenger's horn case as an instrument of more acceptable size. Immediately following this encounter he and his father went out and rented a Schmidt horn for $3 a month. Farkas fell in love with the instrument and decided to become a professional horn player.

Farkas went on to become the youngest member of the All-Chicago High School Orchestra, first horn player in the Chicago Civic Orchestra, and in 1933, without having finished high school, he began playing as a professional first horn with the Kansas City Philharmonic. In 1936 he became the youngest member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, playing first horn until 1941. He then performed with the Cleveland Orchestra (1941-1945) and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1945-1946) before returning to the Cleveland Orchestra for a year and then on to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1948-1960). During this time Farkas also worked as an instructor, teaching horn both privately and at the Kansas City Conservatory, Cleveland Institute, DePaul University, Roosevelt University, and Northwestern University.

In 1960 the then Dean of the Indiana University School of Music, Wilfred Bain asked Farkas to consider leaving his work with the orchestra to become the horn professor at Indiana University. Farkas agreed and served in that capacity for 22 years. When he retired in 1982, Farkas continued to perform as a soloist and taught as a clinician all over the United States. He died in Bloomington on December 21, 1992.