Popol Vuh

“Popol Vuh is a mass for the heart. It's love turned into music, and that's all there is to it”

(Florian Fricke)

“Hosianna” and “Mantra”: two ethereal, mystical terms representing two distant philosophies, two religions at opposite poles, and a single revolutionary musical project — one that fused Christian revelation and Hindu ritual, Western classical tradition and Vedic chant, a rediscovery of the ancient alongside a projection into the future, all within one unbroken sonic flow. Florian Fricke, the mind and spirit behind Popol Vuh, conceived it after his other masterpiece, 1971's “In Der Garten Pharaos”. Unlike that record, though, “Hosianna Mantra” did without the tool most favored by early-Seventies German musicians: electronics, the defining hallmark of Teutonic avant-rock, were dropped because, in Fricke's own words, their artificiality made them ill-suited to expressing the purity and depth of his religious hymns.

Fricke worked with arrangements that were simple but never bare, favoring largely "classical"-leaning acoustic instrumentation (piano, harpsichord, oboe, violin), with rock elements supplied by the guitars, plus a touch of exoticism from the tambura (an Indian stringed instrument ideal for producing drones). His refined supporting cast included guitarist Conny Veit of Amon Duul II, Japanese soprano Djong Yun, violinist Fritz Sonnleitner, Robert Eliscu on oboe, and Klaus Wiese on tambura.

From the very first listens, two things stand out: the first is the total absence of percussion, which bathes the tracks in a fluid, poetic and transcendent timelessness; the second is the power of love radiating from the eight tracks: an other love, divine, deeply interiorized; a sincere and pure love for all that is life. "Hosianna Mantra" is the experience of life within a contemplation of cosmic love. In this sense, Popol Vuh moved from a claustrophobic, futurist kosmische musik to an ecumenical, sacred kosmische musik that anticipated a certain visionary strand of new age.

The album is divided into two parts: "Hosianna Mantra" and "Das V Buch Mose". The opening is entrusted to "Ah!", which begins with a minimal, romantic piano sonata over which float notes of guitar and tamboura. The finale offers a dizzying fugue for piano and electric guitar. The second piece is the Kyrie, a Christian litany from the sung mass, unfolding over a Bach-like air for violin, piano and soprano.

The true symbol of Popol Vuh's religious poetics, however, is the title track, Hosianna-Mantra. It's in this long metaphysical jam that two distant forms of ritual perfectly converge: the hymn to Christ (the Hosanna) and the Hindu liturgy built on the continuous repetition of a single formula or word (the mantra). A dreamlike piano and psychedelic guitar weave the harmonic fabric that supports the baroque echoes of the oboe and Djong Yun's chant.

The second part draws on the biblical narratives of the fifth book of Moses: "Abschied" unfolds in the oboe's tears of joy, marked by a melancholic purity; the blessing-song of "Segnung" comes across as a hieratic lied of unheard-of grace. Finally, set between the two brief interludes of "Andacht", lies the ineffable gem titled "Nicht Hoch Im Himmel": an emanation of dark luminosity, bestower of a suffering stillness, born of a sorrowful joy, this composition, in its atmosphere, turns out to be a true oxymoron capable of touching the very flower of darkness and light.

The 2004 SPV reissue of "Hosianna Mantra" also includes the track "Maria (Ave Maria)", originally released on a 7" single alongside "Be In Love". The allure of sacred texts would continue to captivate Fricke, who went on to compose other works of religious rock; yet not even in the otherwise fine soundtracks written for Werner Herzog's films would Popol Vuh ever again reach the heights of this quiet masterpiece.

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27/09/2007