Hore,Der Du Wagst - Popol Vuh...

[cybot]

Further to my little piece over on the Electronica section I've decided to devote a new topic to the music of Popol Vuh. Below is a diligently typed out Epiphanies article on the life,death and music of Florian Fricke by guitarist Gary Lucas (a former Beefheart member, I think...).I really couldn't have put it better myself and I felt I had to share it with those who dare to listen.....


The camera swoops through the clouds,zooming in on a line of Spanish conquistadors threading their way carefully down a Peruvian mountainside,like a line of soldier’s ants .In the 8th Street Playhouse in Manhattan’s West Village,I sit crouched in the darkness,spellbound by this celluloid spectacle,my ears filled with the sound of a heavenly choir chanting a wordless,dirge-like hymn to what sounds like the darkest forces of Nature,a hymn that soars to the peak of the Andes, shaking the rafters of the cinema.Underpinning the awesome majesty of these hypnotic vocalise is a mournful minimalist guitar figure that repeats insistently in a kind of tidal ebb and flow,at one with the angelic swirling landscape.The year is 1987.The film is Aguirre Wrath of God.I am about to have my eyes forced opened forever by the ineffable beauty of the music of Florian Fricke and his group Popol Vuh.

I have come to treasure every soundtrack Fricke supplied for the singular visions of Herzog (six in all:Aguirre,The Enigima of Kasper Krause,Nosferatu,Heart of Glass Fitzcarraldo and Cobra Verde).The man seemed born specifically for the role of translating Herzog’s mysterious Weltanschauung into the most brilliant,heart stopping film music ever.It is at once medieval and modern,sacerdotal and worldly,an aura of incense mingling with the poisoned perfume of Herzog’s garden of unearthly delights.

Realising the group formed an important chapter I’d somehow missed in the Krautrock saga,the soundtracks prompted me to seek out as many pre-Herzog releases as I could.At that point I was fairly well versed in the German Progressive music canon, but Florian Fricke and his shadowy,mystical group Popol Vuh (their name derived from the creation story of the Quiche Maya) had eluded me – up until that fateful screening.

Originally a trio ,Popol Vuh were founded in 1969 by former music critic Fricke,a classically trained son of an opera singer,in Munich. In 1970 the group could boast the first ever usage of the mighty Moog 3 ( bought off the Rolling Stones because they didn’t know how to use it!!).Oddly enough, they began their recording career with well received appearances in 1971 on the formerly British music dominated programme Beat Club.

Popol Vuh’s synth classic Affenstunde (literally Hour of the Monkeys – perhaps a prophetic prod to Werner Herzog for the ending of his Aguirre film),featured the original great trio line-up of Fricke on Moog,Holger Trulzsch on percussion and Frank Fielder on synth and mixdown.Since that first album,Popol Vuh have gone on to release 30 official albums,remixes and compilations,on vinyl and cd (Affenstunde alone has been re-released in eight different configurations on myriad labels worldwide). So it’s a veritable minefield with a lot of tracks being repeated and sometimes retitled as new.

With its spacious,glowing music,played on a bastardised church organ and retrofitted with tape loops of voices and other instruments,including a home made Mellotron-like instrument,Aguirre’s transcendental main title theme,Lacrime Di Ri (the Tears of the King),remains for many the eternal Florian Fricke calling card. But for me his greatest,most numinous composition is his opening title music to Herzog’s 1978 recreation of Murnau’s silent vampire classic,Nosferatu – a piece known as Hore,Der Du Wagst (Listen,You Who Dare),which plays as the camera lingers on opened sepulchres,their mummified contents beckoning and grimacing in rictus of death.

These two Fricke themes – among the finest film music ever composed – so burned themselves into my brain that I felt compelled,commanded even,by some unknown spirit to cover them on solo guitar,in my own style,on two of my own albums. I recorded both pieces at home,live in my living room,on an extremely gloomy,snowbound whiteout of a late afternoon Winter’s day,in an absolute trance.Fricke’s music has,and continues to exert,a profound effect on me.

The excellent 1993 Best Of Popol Vuh cd compilation on Milan contains excerpts of most of the best bits from all of Herzog’s film,plus some more of their ‘greatest hits’,and is heartily recommended to all Popol Vuh beginners.It includes the main title music from Fitzcarraldo,whose Orff-like feverish choir and over the top bass percussion will give your neighbour a heart attack,if you crank it up loud enough.But,after this,I mostly favour the early music of the primal, pre-acoustic Popol Vuh trio, particularly their second album,In Den Garten Pharaos.Fricke,Fielder and Trulzsch seamlessly meld the natural sounds of lapping water, eerie sc –fi electro shrieks and theremin quavers,and assorted Turkish percussion into an audio vortex,a whirling maelstrom of spacey ethnic-sounding passages,some of which got recycled in Nosferatu.

Even better is In Den Garten’s side two:the 19 minute Vuh,recorded live in a cathedral in Baumberg,Bavaria,where Fricke holds his own in a monochordal tranced-out jam with startling affinities to the Velvet Underground’s epochal Sister Ray.Like John Cale,Florian keeps the superior firepower of his organ in reserve,choosing his moments carefully to surprise and overtake his confreres in a Sun-Tzu kind of strategy.The 1983 reissue of In Den Garten on Celestial Harmonies adds the Aguirre theme to the package and closes with a breathtaking solo piano meditation by Fricke entitled Spirit of Peace,which seems to emanate from some other realm.Florian Fricke was definitely hot wired to the cosmos – it’s delicate and dreamy without succumbing to any namby-pamby Windham Hill horseshit.The real New Age starts here.

And thus we come to 1973’s Seligpreisung (Beatitudes), and 1974’s Einsjager & Siebenjager (most of the guitar pieces on this album were used for the film Aguirre),both Kosmische Music releases. For many,these are the classic Popol Vuh albums.They’re coiled,devotional mantras that unwind with inexorable logic;in the best Prog tradition,their numerous movements,time changes and harmonic shifts climax grandly or merely splutter out.With texts drawn from St.Matthew’s Gospel, the former album delineates Fricke’s ecumenical spirit if nothing else;and the latter codifies the most rockist phase of Popol Vuh,with the astonishing Daniel Fichelsher’s raga-guitar heroics to the fore.Eastern music was a constant throughout Fricke’s career.

His subsequent recordings introduced a kinder,gentler sound palette,often bringing in sacred texts and employing ethnic instrumental combinations.He never totally abandoned his electronic roots,and his later 90’s albums included loops,drum machines machine beats and found sounds.Still, the acoustic piano beckoned – in 1990 he actually released a solo piano devoted to Mozart,played straight on a Bosendorfer.

Sadly, Florian Fricke died on 29th December 2001 at his home in Munich, following a stroke that befell him just before Christmas.To hell with titles,provenance,reutilisation and recycling of the past in the continuum of Fricke’s ouvre. It’s the spectral (truly a justified adjective here) ability of this haunting music to blur the boundaries of time and space that makes me mourn the tragic loss the world has suffered with his untimely death. (Gary Lucas)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxE4yITf ... re=related

Here's the opening scene of Nosferatu alluded to above where Gary's favourite Vuh music is used.But just looking at it now leads me to believe that Gary is using the wrong title! I think he's referring to Der Ruf Der Rorhrfloete which,confusingly is the last track on my original vinyl copy of Nosferatu; however on another 'version' of Nosferatu the track Hore,Der Du Wagst is the first track on Side 2!As far as I remember it's a piano piece....and it's a beautiful haunting piece screaming with pain,the pain of Eternity...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt0X5bl59Oc

Yeeeeaah, I'm right?!!? This is the version Gary's talking about.Hore,Der Du Wagst indeed......

[mcq]

Fascinating reading, Dermot. Like all good music writing, it makes you hungry to hear the music (which I am itching to do). And yes, Gary Lucas did play guitar with Beefheart. He was no Zoot Horn Rollo (who was?) but he was an integral part of the good Captain's final period - the wonderful Doc At The Radar Station and Ice Cream For Crow. This may be off-topic but I think it's worth mentioning that Beefheart's greatest masterpieces - Trout Mask Replica and Lick My Decals Off, Baby - were recorded on the Frank Zappa-owned label, Bizarre/Straight, which also released Tim Buckley's finest two works - Lorca and Starsailor. It's amazing what happens when you give an artist complete control over a recording regardless of the commercial implications.

[cybot]

Fascinating reading, Dermot. Like all good music writing, it makes you hungry to hear the music (which I am itching to do). And yes, Gary Lucas did play guitar with Beefheart. He was no Zoot Horn Rollo (who was?) but he was an integral part of the good Captain's final period - the wonderful Doc At The Radar Station and Ice Cream For Crow. This may be off-topic but I think it's worth mentioning that Beefheart's greatest masterpieces - Trout Mask Replica and Lick My Decals Off, Baby - were recorded on the Frank Zappa-owned label, Bizarre/Straight, which also released Tim Buckley's finest two works - Lorca and Starsailor. It's amazing what happens when you give an artist complete control over a recording regardless of the commercial implications.

Thanks Paul but I sincerely hope you not the only one hungry to hear the music!As regards Beefheart, the two works you mentioned above....what can I possibly say?!?!Again musicians willing to go beyond the boundaries of what is possible....Also I have to mention the Grow Fins 5 CD/three double Lp sets - WOW?!?!?!?!

Finally I have to say that I don't necessarily agree with every word Gary says in his appraisal on the works of Florian;you can work it out yourselves when your own journey begins :-)

[fergus]

Your typing skill must be at a very high level at this stage....fair play to you lad!!

[cybot]

Your typing skill must be at a very high level at this stage....fair play to you lad!!

Thanks fergus, one key/hour :-)) But, really, I've forgotten the art of actually writing something,you know,the way we used to write a letter.That's what it felt like and,would you believe,actually brought me that wee bit closer to an even greater appreciation of the artists music...it was,in a sense,exhilarating and liberating too.

[JAW]

Your typing skill must be at a very high level at this stage....fair play to you lad!!

Thanks fergus, one key/hour :-)) But, really, I've forgotten the art of actually writing something,you know,the way we used to write a letter.That's what it felt like and,would you believe,actually brought me that wee bit closer to an even greater appreciation of the artists music...it was,in a sense,exhilarating and liberating too.

Great patience to type that, Dermot, and following on from it I think that I'll be exploring new music (to me) very soon. Thanks again for that!

[cybot]

Your typing skill must be at a very high level at this stage....fair play to you lad!!

Thanks fergus, one key/hour :-)) But, really, I've forgotten the art of actually writing something,you know,the way we used to write a letter.That's what it felt like and,would you believe,actually brought me that wee bit closer to an even greater appreciation of the artists music...it was,in a sense,exhilarating and liberating too.

Great patience to type that, Dermot, and following on from it I think that I'll be exploring new music (to me) very soon. Thanks again for that!

Thanks John, I haven't check the current Popol Vuh release set up (but I will,I promise!);all I can say is they were really messed up by the various record companys they had and I remember buying yet another version of Fitzcarraldo only to find that most of the music was operatic stuff by Caruso etc etc with very little PV input!;it was still amazing though. Then the classic Nosferatu came in two versions with completely different track listings and the first version contained large chunks,in bite sizes, of In Den Garten Pharaos, their second album......it goes on and on and on.......that probably explains why I possess 28 of their albums :-))

[JAW]

This music lark gets confusing, doesn't it? Here's a link with a bit of info and asome reviews.

www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=1227

[fergus]

Your typing skill must be at a very high level at this stage....fair play to you lad!!

Thanks fergus, one key/hour ....

Nope, definitely stenographer level I think!

[cybot]

Your typing skill must be at a very high level at this stage....fair play to you lad!!

Thanks fergus, one key/hour ....

Nope, definitely stenographer level I think!

Well, ok, two keys/hour :-)))