Hungarian composer and virtuoso lutenist of the Renaissance. He almost certainly wrote an enormous amount of music, but very little was printed: 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 fourteen motets—all in amazingly faithful polyphonic arrangements for lute alone. Additionally, he transcribed vocal motets by contemporary composers such as Josquin des Prez, Clemens non Papa, Nicolas Gombert, and Orlando di Lasso into arrangements for the lute. He died in Padua during the plague of 1576. As was common practice at the time, all the possessions of plague victims were destroyed by fire, so most of his manuscript music was lost.
