Bálint Bakfark (1507–August 15 or August 22, 1576) (His name is variously spelled as Bachfarrt, Backvart, Bekwark, and occasionally his first name is rendered as Valentin) was a Hungarian composer and lutenist of the Renaissance. He was enormously influential as a lutenist at the time, and renowned as a virtuoso on the instrument.

Life

He was born at Brassó, Transylvania (now Braşov, Romania). An orphan, he was brought up by the Greff family, and was educated in Buda at the court of John Zápolya. Bakfark remained there until 1540, though he possibly traveled to Italy once during this time. Sometime in the 1540s he went to Paris, but finding the position of lutenist to the king filled he went in 1549 to Poland, where he was employed as a court lutenist by Sigismund Augustus II. From then until 1566 he traveled extensively around Europe, with his renown increasing, but remained faithful to his employer in spite of numerous efforts by other monarchs to win him away; the riches bestowed on him by Sigismund may have affected his decision to remain attached to the court in Wilna.

What happened to him in 1566 is not precisely known, but he clearly did something to provoke the wrath of the king, and scarcely had time to flee before Polish army troops ransacked his house and destroyed his possessions. After this he lived for a while in Vienna, and then returned to Transylvania, but not for long; in 1571 he moved to Padua, in Italy, where he remained until his death in the plague of 1576.

As was common practice at the time, all the possessions of plague victims were destroyed by fire, so all of his manuscript music was lost.

Music and influence

While Bakfark almost certainly wrote an enormous amount of music, very little was reprinted: a commonly given reason was that it was simply too difficult for others to play. His surviving works include ten fantasies, seven madrigals, eight chansons, and 14 motets—all in amazingly faithful polyphonic arrangements for lute alone. Additionally, he transcribed vocal motets by contemporary composers such as Josquin Desprez, Clemens non Papa, Nicolas Gombert, and Orlando di Lasso into arrangements for the lute.

References

• Article "Bálint Bakfark", in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1561591742
• Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0393095304