Valentin Greff Bakfark (Valentinus Greff Bakfark, Bálint Bakfark, born around 1507 in Kronstadt/Transylvania (then Brassó/Hungary); died August 15, 1576 in Padua) was a Hungarian lutenist and instrumental composer of the Renaissance.
He was born in Brassó, Transylvania, Kingdom of Hungary (now Brașov in Romania), into a family of Transylvanian Saxon origin. As an orphan, he was raised by the Greff family and educated in Buda at the court of Johann Zápolya. Bakfark remained there until 1540, although he may have traveled to Italy once during this period.
Sometime in the 1540s, he traveled to Paris, but since he was unable to fill the position of royal lutenist, he went to Jagiellonian Poland in 1549, where he was hired by Sigismund II Augustus as court lutenist. From then until 1566, he traveled extensively throughout Europe and became increasingly well known, but remained loyal to his employer despite numerous attempts by other monarchs to poach him; the riches Sigismund bestowed upon him may have influenced his decision to remain at the court of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania in Vilnius.
What happened to him in 1566 is not known exactly, but he apparently did something to incur the wrath of the king and barely had time to flee before Polish troops ransacked his house and destroyed his possessions. He then lived in Vienna for a while before returning to Transylvania, but not for long; in 1571, he moved to Padua in Italy, where he remained until his death during the plague of 1576.
As was customary at the time, all the possessions of plague victims were destroyed by fire, so most of his musical manuscripts were lost.