Bakfark, Valentin (EN)

Bakfark, Bekwark, Valentin Greff, *between 1526 and 1530 Kronstadt in Transylvania (now Brașov, Romania), †22 August 1576 Padua, lutenist and composer. He was a descendant of German settlers who came to Transylvania in the Middle Ages (Transylvanian Saxons). As a young boy, he stayed at the court of John Zápolya, Voivode of Transylvania (King of Hungary from 1525) in Buda, where he started learning to play the lute, probably from an Italian lutenist employed there.

After the death of John Zápolya (1540), he was cared for by the widowed queen-regent – Isabella Jagiellon, sister of the Polish king Sigismund II Augustus. After leaving her Hungarian court in 1549, he came to Poland in search of new employment. On 14 May 1549, he played in Piotrków in the presence of Sigismund Augustus, and on 15 June, he became his court lutenist. On 7 September 1550, he married Catherine of Narbut, a widow from Vilnius, in Kraków. During the mourning period after the death of Barbara Radziwiłł, Queen of Poland (died 8 May 1551), he left the royal court and went to Königsberg to Prince Albert of Prussia, who supported him in various ways in the following years. Having obtained a pension from the prince for his wife and children, he set off on a journey across Europe. In Nuremberg, he met Philipp Melanchthon, who recommended him to the Fugger family in Augsburg. However, warfare in southern Germany forced him to return to Poland.

After a few months, he left again, this time to Lyon, where the first collection of his composition was published in print in January 1553 (dated 1552 due to local time calculation), dedicated to Cardinal François Tournon, Archbishop of Lyon (partly re-edited in 1564). He spent some time with the cardinal at the royal court in Paris, and then moved to Italy, where he presented his skills to the Pope, and later came back to the court of Sigismund Augustus through Venice and Kaliningrad. With the support of Duke Albert, he got a significant rise in his salary, which made him the best-paid musician at the Polish court.

During the ten years he spent in Poland, he accumulated wealth; in 1559, he purchased a house in Vilnius and the son of the King of Hungary, John Sigismund Zápolya decided to ennoble him. His social position, fame and popularity were constantly growing. As a court lutenist, he stayed mainly in Vilnius until May 1565, maintaining constant contact with Duke Albert; he came to his court several times, educated a lutenist for him and probably sent him his compositions. He later went to Vienna and then returned to Kraków to oversee the publication of Łazarz Andrysowicz’s second collection of his works. The tablature, the printing of which was financed by the lutenist himself, includes 24 pages with musical notation, so it is much more modest than the first tablature published in Lyon by Jacques Moderne. The remaining four pages are filled with an extensive dedication letter and two coats of arms – of the Jagiellonians and of the musician himself, along with a poetic explanation by Andrzej Trzecieski.

In 1569, the tablature was published again in Antwerp in an almost identical form (except for a change in format to a more practical “in quarto” instead of the original “in folio”). Although Bakfark dedicated the tablature to Sigismund Augustus on 15 October, he did not manage to hand it to him personally, and at the end of 1565, he decided to enter the service of Emperor Maximilian II. This sudden change could have been caused either by his uncloaking as an agent of Duke Albert, for which there is no evidence, or antagonisms among the people participating in the private life of Sigismund Augustus, whom Bakfark as a lutenist probably belonged to (among the preserved letters from Bakfark to Duke Albert, one, from 25 January 1552, is an extensive account of political events concerning Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands and England; however, none of the letters contain any information about the Polish court and its policy).

In January 1566, Bakfark tried to sell his Vilnius estate, granting his wife an appropriate authority. Before he realised this plan, his house had been plundered and destroyed by the army (probably in revenge for his disloyalty to the Polish king), and Bakfark, never returning to Vilnius again, took refuge in Poznań and from 1 July 1566 in Vienna. He stayed at the imperial court in Vienna, where he married for the second time, for over a year and a half, with a 3-month break, during which he travelled to Hungary, where he probably moved for a longer period in March 1568.

After the death of John Sigismund Zápolya (14 March 1571), Bakfark abandoned estates granted to him by the prince and went to Padua, where he worked as a lutenist and lute teacher for the students of the local university. He died five years later during the plague, along with his wife and their four children. Bakfark’s neighbour, a famous lutenist Wendelin Tieffenbrucker (Wendelio Venere), created Bakfark’s inventory which proves that the musician did not destroy all his manuscripts, as legend had it. In addition to editions of Josquin’s and Palestrina’s works, it records Bakfark’s tablature printed in Krakow and three other handwritten tablatures “in folio.” In 1578, Tieffenbrucker, together with the “natio germanica” of the University of Padua, erected a monument to the lutenist in the church of San Lorenzo. Valentin’s father and brother, Michael, were also lutenists at the Transylvanian court, while the figure of Johannes Bakfark was introduced into earlier musicological literature as a result of a mistake by Besard, who gave this name to one of Valentin’s fantasies in his collection from 1603.

Bakfark’s work belongs to the greatest achievements of the 16^th-century music for lute. From the perspective of the years, it appears as a perfect phenomenon, but fruitless in its perfection. Bakfark used his excellent mastery of lute playing technique to recreate and create exceptionally polyphonic structures, so basically incompatible with the nature of the instrument, while he very sparingly used effects typical of lute texture, which played the main role in the development of this music, and enriched the music in general with values ​​impossible to achieve using other means of performance. In Bakfark’s intavolations (33 in total), the care in leading the voices according to vocal prototypes is so far advanced that in the case of the 6-voice motet, even in longer sections of the lute version, there is a real six-voice, while, for example, in analogous intavolations by A. de Rippe, a lutenist not much older but of a similar calibre, six-notes appear sporadically. In some intavolations, including 5-voice ones, Bakfark almost constantly uses ornamentation of melodic lines with phrases either stereotyped or quite sophisticated; more often, however, especially in the pieces from the later Kraków collection, he limits himself only to ornamenting the cadences, which makes the original structure more perceptible (O. Gombosi calls these intabulations even “lute reductions” by analogy to the later piano reductions). The list of composers’ names whose works Bakfark intabulated is also significant. Thus, motets by Gombert (4), Clemens non Papa (3), Josquin des Prés (2), Lasso (1), Arcadelt (1), Jachet de Mantua (1), Pieton (1), Richafort (1); chansons by Janequin (4), Josquin (1), Crecquillon (1), Rogier (1), Sandrino (1); madrigals by Arcadelt (4), Verdelot (2), Yvo (1). Of these compositions, 1 motet is 6-voice, 4 motets and 1 chanson – 5-voice, and the rest – 4-voice.

Bakfark’s fantasies (9 in total), named only in print with 1553 ricercars, stand out against the background of all lute music for their exceptionally consistently applied imitative technique. One is 3-voice, the rest – 4-voice. All are multi-thematic and in the vast majority, there is hardly a single bar, with the exception of cadences ending individual leads, in which there is no theme in at least one voice. Within the lead, the theme generally does not undergo any transformations, while there is often affinity between individual themes, what is more, in many fantasies the same theme appears more or less transformed, presented in ever different contrapuntal combinations. In some fantasies, successive performances follow one another without any overarching formal plan, but in many they are combined into larger parts (usually three), separated by more distinct cadences. These parts sometimes show analogous formal assumptions, more often they contrast with each other either by the number of voices, or by the use of a greater number of ornaments, or by the very choice of imitated phrases. Moreover, entire parts (usually the final ones) are sometimes repeated. These features indicate a departure in these works from the principle of chaotic sequencing of sections and a conscious realisation of holistic architectural concepts, in which formal elements of the late motet are combined with song elements, encountered in chansons and madrigals. The fantasies place Bakfark in the ranks of the most outstanding 16^th-century masters, whose works he himself selected for intabulation.

Literature: 7 fantasies, intabulations of 2 motets and 2 chansons in: Österreichische Lautenmusik im 16. Jahrhundert, ed. A. Koczirz, “Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich” XVIII, 2, 1911; 10 fantasies in: O. Gombosi Der Lautenist V. Bakfark. Leben und Werke, Budapest 1935, 2^nd ed. 1967; Czarna krowa in: H. Opieński La musiąue polonaise, Paris 1918, also in a supplement to “Muzyka” 1929 no. 6, ed. O. Gombosi, and in: Muzyka w dawnym Krakowie, ed. Z.M. Szweykowski, Kraków 1964; therein 3 fantasies, ed. P. Poźniak; H.P. Kosack Die Lautentabulaturen im Stammbuch des Burggrafen Achatius zu Dohna, in: Altpreussische Beiträge, Kaliningrad 1933 (includes a facsimile of chanson intabulation); H. Opieński Sześć listów W. Bakfarka, “Kwartalnik Muzyczny” 1932 no. 16 (includes a edition of letters to Prince Albert); O. Gombosi Der Lautenist V. Bakfark. Leben und Werke, Budapest 1935, 2^nd ed. 1967 (includes a transcription of 10 fantasies); I. Homolya Bakfark, version in Hungarian Budapest 1982, version in English entitled V. Bakfark, transl. G. Gulyás, 1984; I. Homolya Bakfark and Greff. Two Names – One Person, “Lute” XXIV, 1984 (version in Hungarian 1983); D. Benkő Quelques réflexions à propos de Bakfark, in: Le luth et sa musique II, ed. J.-M. Vaccaro, Paris 1984; I. Szabó Reneszânsz költészetünk es zenénk forrásairól, “Magyar Zene” XXVI, 1985; P. Poźniak „Czarna krowa” czy „O guardame las vacas?, “Muzyka” 1986 no. 3; P Király B. Bakfark adománylevele and Mikor született Bakfark? and Adalékok B. B. életéhez és munkásságához, “Magyar Zene” XXVIII, XXX, XXXI, 1987, 1989, 1990; P Király Działalność W. Bakfarka w Polsce. Uzupełnienia i korektury, “Muzyka” 1989 no. 3 (version in Hungarian 1985); P. Király Bakfark hagyatékának inventáriuma, “Muzsika” XXXV, 1992; L. Virägh B. Bakfark chanson-intavolációi, “Magyar Zene” XXXIV, 1993; A. Deâk „Albo Juss Dalej”, ein Chanson von Sandrin in Bakfarks Transkription, “Die Laute. Jahrbuch der Deutschen Lautengesellschaft” I, 1997, Frankfurt am Main 1998; P. Király Valentin Bakfark, in: Beiträge zur Musikgeschichte der Siebenbürger Sachsen, ed. K. Teutsh, Kludenbach 1999; E. Deák, I. Szabó Bakfarks „IX. Fantasie”: offenbar ein Pasticcio, “Die Laute” 6, 2005; P. Király Des deux variantes de la réédition anversoise du Lautenbuch de Bakfark de Cracovie, “Geluit-Luthinerie – Belgian Lute Academy” 39, 2007; P. Király „Non dite mai” – ein Bakfark zugeschriebenes Lautenstück in einer Krakauer Lautentabulatur, in: Muzykolog wobec świadectw źródłowych i dokumentów. Księga pamiątkowa dedykowana Profesorowi Piotrowi Poźniakowi w 70. rocznicę urodzin, ed. Z. Fabiańska, J. Kubieniec, A. Sitarz, P. Wilk, Kraków 2009; R.J. Wieczorek Music and patronage in light of letters of dedication: Wacław of Szamotuły, Valentin Bakfark and King Sigismund II Augustus, “Muzyka” 68, 2023 no. 1.