Short answers, pulled from the story.
Bálint Bakfark was a Hungarian lutenist and composer of Transylvanian Saxon origin, born around 1507 in Brassó, Transylvania. He was considered the foremost virtuoso lutenist of the Renaissance, so renowned that multiple European monarchs tried to recruit him away from his employer, Sigismund II Augustus of Poland.
Bakfark was born in Brassó, Transylvania, in the Kingdom of Hungary, a city known today as Brașov in Romania. He came from a Transylvanian Saxon family and was raised as an orphan by the Greff family.
From 1549 onward, Bakfark served as court lutenist to Sigismund II Augustus of Jagiellon Poland. He remained loyal to Sigismund for roughly seventeen years despite repeated attempts by other monarchs to recruit him away.
Most of Bakfark's manuscripts were destroyed during the plague of 1576 in Padua, where he died. At the time, the possessions of plague victims were required to be burned, and his manuscript music was lost in that process.
The surviving works include ten fantasies, seven madrigals, eight chansons, and fourteen motets, all arranged as polyphonic settings for lute alone. He also left transcriptions of vocal works by composers including Josquin des Prez, Clemens non Papa, Nicolas Gombert, and Orlando di Lasso.
Bakfark died on either the 15th or the 22nd of August 1576 in Padua, Italy, during a plague epidemic. He had been living in Padua since 1571.