Eryk Brikner

As a monk he enjoyed great esteem, and as a musician he was described as a great organist and composer. Brikner was one of the few organists in Kapela Jasna Góra, as the large number of duties entrusted to them forced the involvement of at least two musicians of this specialty at the same time. The organ was the most important instrument accompanying the liturgy, playing both solo and accompanying the singing or performances of the band. The organists were among the best educated musicians in the group and often - as in the case of Brikner - were also composing.

The beginning of the artist's activity in the Jasna Góra ensemble coincided with significant changes in the field of instruments: in 1721 a new positive was purchased, and in 1722 Adam Casparini, an outstanding Silesian organ builder, completed the construction of the organ in the chapel of Our Lady. He was also entrusted with making a large thirty-three-voice organ for the main church and a small instrument placed on the wall in the presbytery. Both instruments sounded for the first time in 1725.

The Pauline ensemble in Brikner's time could boast of a very varied and up-to-date repertoire, adapted of course to local needs, but including works by Polish, Silesian, Czech, German, Italian and other artists, and its continuous enrichment was taken care of by subsequent conductors of the ensemble, in particular by Fr. Paweł Weisgärber, once a member of Paweł Esterhazy's band in Hungary, who traveled several times to Silesia and Prague in search of new compositions. Such an artistic environment must have been extremely inspiring for young musicians joining the band. It is enough to mention that Brikner had a few competitors in the field of composition, among which the most prominent were Wincenty Maxylewicz, Józef Kobierkowicz and Marcin Józef Żebrowski.

Brikner's oeuvre, although relatively modest in number, deserves attention due to the artist's good compositional skills and great melodic inventiveness. Compositions preserved to our times include two versions of the texts that make up the Komplety service, a hymn for the feast of the apostles and a collection of compositions performed during vespers.

After the Mass, Vespers were the most important element of the liturgy celebrated at the Jasna Góra Sanctuary. They were celebrated from 3 p.m., and alongside the psalms and the canticle, polyphonic hymns to poetry were sung, as well as Marian antiphons. The collection of Brikner's works, written for the Pauline band and intended to be performed during Vespers, has survived in the form of two manuscripts kept in the Jasna Góra archives, one of which is a complete but not signed message of the work, the other - the composer's autograph, but without the trumpet part. On the later title page attached to the autograph we read: Vesperae pro toto A [nn] o. Canto Basso Violinis 2bus Con Organo Authore R. [everendo] P. [atre] Erico Brýkner ord [inis] S. [ancti] P [auli] Primi Eremitae [further in another hand:] Pro Horo Musico Ecclesiae Parochialis Kłob. [ucensi]. Canonicorum Reg. [Ularium] Lat. [Eranensium] Ao 1794 From P. Chwastecki Organist Kłobuck.

From the information provided, we can assume that in 1794 Brikner's autograph, then owned by Kapela Jasna Góra, was handed over to a music ensemble operating at the parish in Kłobuck run by regular Lateran canons. This manuscript is therefore a testimony to the interest in the composer's works many years after his death.

The psalms composed by Brikner together with the canticle "Magnificat" constitute the core of the festive polyphonic repertoire of Vespers for the whole church year (in the presented recording, the psalm "Laudate pueri in D" attributed to Brikner, kept in the form of a manuscript in the Jasna Góra collection was added to the above-mentioned recording). The order of writing the psalms in the manuscript resulted from their belonging to the vespers services celebrated on subsequent holidays of the church year: a. First vespers about the apostles and evangelists, about martyrs and believers (Psalms 109, 110, 111, 112, 116); b. Sunday (ps. 113); c. about the Mother of God and holy women (ps. 121, 126, 147); d. second vespers of the apostles and evangelists (ps. 115, 125, 138); e. second vespers of followers-bishops (ps. 131); second vespers at Christmas (ps. 129); g. for Corpus Christi (ps. 127). From the above psalms, it is also possible to arrange the 1st and 2nd Vespers for the feast of the dedication of the church (ps. 109-112, 147). The manuscript ends with a canticle "Magnificat" present in each of the aforementioned services.

An interesting feature integrating the collection "Vesperae pro toto anno" is the tonal differentiation of the psalms and the canticle, because Brikner used in his works all thirteen major and minor keys (except for F sharp minor) with up to three characters by the key (he used the key C- major, A minor and D major). All compositions were assigned one timbre resulting from the use of one type of scoring - a vocal duet (soprano and bass) supplemented with two violins and an organ. Also in two psalms, exceptionally composed for a solo voice, the performance was entrusted to the soprano (in ps. 112) and bass (in ps. 126), accompanied by the ensemble of instruments described above.

The piece "Laudate pueri", not belonging to the collection "Vesperae", was presented in a way characteristic of other Brikner's compositions - the performing ensemble creates a four-voice vocal (SATB) with the accompaniment of two violins, a viola and an organ.

All musical arrangements of the psalms were subordinated to one formal concept, resulting from the verse structure of the biblical texts. At the junction of successive verses or half-verses, Brikner planned musical intervals consisting in changing the vocal and instrumental cast, often combined with a cadence, and sometimes introducing purely instrumental sections, returning in the course of the composition as a ritornel (especially in psalms 112, 126, 127 and "Magnificat") . The composer used all the possibilities inherent in the ensemble adopted by him. The soprano solo contrasted the bass parts, the vocal duet with single-voice fragments, the accompaniment of two violins - an independent basso continuo part. The verbal notes included in the score ("solo",

The texts of the psalms, sometimes elaborate, were captured by the composer in the form of a dynamic, rather syllabic melodic line. Avoiding the repetition of words, overlapping the end and beginning of adjacent verses, and often entrusting both voices with the simultaneous performance of two verses or half-verses of psalm have contributed to the creation of compact compositions. However, as a consequence of this, in some fragments of the works the intelligibility of the text was significantly reduced. In the 18th century, this solution was used quite often, although it was in contradiction with the early Baroque assumption about the primary role of words in musical compositions.

Fr. Eryk Brikner's works were composed without the use of virtuosity. Vocal voices are placed in registers convenient for them. Especially the soprano parts, usually performed by soprano boys, supported additionally by one of the violin voices, generally do not rise above g2. The melody with a rhythmic date motif, devoid of longer melisms, is generally carried out in a smooth repetition-second or three-note movement, and sometimes - especially in full-cast fragments - takes the form of a declamation. Longer melismatic phrases, which make up Brikner's rarely used concertante texture, were reserved for the ending episodes with the word "Amen". The sound of the pieces is soft, euphonic, devoid of sharp dissonances, and in the polyphonic structures, homorhythmic causes the impression of ordering. The violin melody reveals a twofold face: it partially shares the features of vocal voices, when the first or second violin alternately duplicate the soprano voice, entwining it with its sound. On other occasions, the violin parts exhibit purely instrumental features, the most characteristic of which are broken chords, dynamic scales and tremolo. A lively rhythmic pulsation is emphasized by an instrumental bass voice, more often treated as a melody line than as a harmonic support. On other occasions, the violin parts exhibit purely instrumental features, the most characteristic of which are broken chords, dynamic scales and tremolo. A lively rhythmic pulsation is emphasized by an instrumental bass voice, more often treated as a melody line than as a harmonic support. On other occasions, the violin parts exhibit purely instrumental features, the most characteristic of which are broken chords, dynamic scales and tremolo. A lively rhythmic pulsation is emphasized by an instrumental bass voice, more often treated as a melody line than as a harmonic support.

Despite presenting the psalms and the canticle in a verse form, which appeared in Polish music in the second half of the 17th century, Brikner clearly strove to obtain the impression of coherence of these works, using recurring melodic-rhythmic formulas and instrumental ritornels. The contrasts between the sections of the composition are not sharp, they are not accompanied by a change in meter, and the number of sound variants is small.

Brikner's Vespers can also be perceived as a specific speech of sounds, exposing the content of the verbal text. From this perspective, the elaborated psalms and the canticle seem more lyrical than dramatic. Most often, the artist portrayed the meaning of words using the shape of a melodic line, leading his voice up the scale on words associated with pitch and size, or using the lowering of the voice to interpret words related to lowness, humility, death, etc. One of the best examples of this type of music interpretation of the text is the opening phrase of psalm 129: "De profundis clamavi ad te Domine" (From the depths I called to you, Lord), reminiscent of the beginning of Marcin Wronowicz's work of the same title.