The record
At a glance
- Artist
- Popol Vuh
- Album
- Sixth studio album
- Original tracks
- Nine
- Text
- Song of Songs, adapted by Florian Fricke
- Voice
- Djong Yun
- Producers
- Florian Fricke and Reinhard Langowski
Why it matters
Sacred language becomes an album about embodied love
Das Hohelied Salomos gives Popol Vuh's sacred music an explicitly erotic and embodied text rather than treating devotion as escape from human desire. Fricke said the biblical source was a mystical love song and described the complete album as dedicated to love. Nine compact settings allow repeated phrases and figures to return in changed contexts instead of being absorbed into one side-long composition. Djong Yun's soprano carries intimacy, urgency and praise while remaining integrated with piano and guitar rather than placed over a neutral accompaniment.
Daniel Fichelscher's electric and acoustic guitars can sing alongside Yun or create a contrasting physical surge. Alois Gromer's sitar and Shana Kumar's tabla enlarge the resonance and pulse without turning the album into a generalized imitation of Indian music. Electronics credited to Fricke, Frank Fiedler and Robert Wedel provide studio color inside a predominantly acoustic-electric ensemble. The album matters because it unites love poem, sacred address and rock intensity in a sequence whose recurring titles make close comparison rewarding.
February 1975
A new cycle after Einsjäger & Siebenjäger
Hosianna Mantra and Seligpreisung had already established Fricke's interest in Christian and biblical text settings. Einsjäger & Siebenjäger strengthened the partnership with Daniel Fichelscher and closed what Fricke later called one cycle. Fricke explicitly identified Das Hohelied Salomos as the beginning of a new cycle. The album draws its lyrics from King Solomon, arranged by Fricke, rather than from newly invented narrative characters.
It was recorded at Bavaria Tonstudio in Munich in February 1975. Florian Fricke and Reinhard Langowski produced and handled mixdown; Fricke also arranged. United Artists issued the German LP as S 297811 in 1975. Aguirre appeared during the same year as a retrospective hybrid of soundtrack and other recordings, but it was not the direct studio sequel to this February session.
Core and guests
The central trio expands through sitar and tabla
Fricke's piano can bless, propel or interrupt; large chords and quick runs prevent devotional calm from becoming uniform. Fichelscher treats electric guitar as a sustained melodic voice and acoustic guitar as a source of pulse and transparency. His percussion ranges from subtle motion to crashing accents that deliberately roughen the album's beauty. Yun is the album's central interpreter, and her presence makes Instrumental an indefensible classification.
Gromer's sitar extends harmonic resonance while keeping a distinct plucked attack beside piano and guitar. Kumar's tabla introduces detailed hand-played rhythm without replacing Fichelscher's broader percussion role. The electronics credit is shared among three people and should not be translated into unsupported track-by-track synthesizer assignments. Langowski's production and mixdown role is equal documentary evidence, not a secondary credit to be omitted in favor of Fricke alone.
Ecstatic love song
Piano, singing guitar and devotional rhythm
The album balances vocal clarity with instrumental layers that remain individually audible. Piano defines harmonic movement, while electric guitar often rises in long arcs around the voice. Sitar and tabla create continuity through resonance and cyclical touch rather than ornamental exoticism. The first side repeatedly alternates direct address with nocturnal searching.
The second side opens by declaring winter over, then intensifies the language of love through wine, lineage and kisses. Two In den Nächten settings and two Du Sohn Davids settings create internal comparison without forming simple reprises. Percussion can make a sacred phrase suddenly physical, preserving tension between stillness and jubilation. The production avoids the enormous electronic space of early Popol Vuh; its scale is human, close and ensemble-based.
Track guide
Nine original settings across two sides
Steh auf, zieh mich dir nach
Rise, Draw Me After You opens with motion and invitation. Yun's voice gives the imperative both intimacy and urgency, while piano and guitar make following feel musical rather than merely verbal. The arrangement establishes the album's central tension: sacred language is carried by bodily desire and forward movement. Sitar resonance and percussion widen the field without obscuring the words. As the first track it does not summarize the Song of Songs; it places one active request at the entrance and lets the following pieces examine beauty, night, lineage, season and touch from different angles.
Du Schönste der Weiber
The address to the fairest among women turns praise into direct song. Fichelscher and Fricke share the composition credit, and the interplay between guitar and piano gives Yun room to stretch the melodic line. Beauty is spoken to rather than described from a distance. That distinction keeps the track relational and helps the album avoid becoming abstract spiritual atmosphere. Following the opener's invitation, the piece pauses movement for recognition. Later supplements include unrelated alternate-session titles, but this original second track has its own complete place in the 1975 side.
In den Nächten auf den Gassen I
The first Nights in the Streets setting is a compact threshold. Nocturnal searching enters the album through a minute and a half of concentrated gesture rather than a developed narrative scene. Piano, guitar, voice and resonance establish uncertainty quickly. The Roman numeral matters because a longer second setting appears later on the same side, while a third was added only on reissues. This first version functions like an opening question: the listener enters public streets after two direct addresses, and Du Sohn Davids I answers by shifting the language toward lineage and sacred naming.
Du Sohn Davids I
The first Son of David setting brings biblical lineage into the side's sequence of desire. Yun's vocal line and Fricke's piano give the address gravity, while Fichelscher's guitar can answer with a less formal, more searching intensity. The album does not assign a new character or dramatic speaker beyond the adapted source. Its three-minute scale allows the phrase to become a complete meditation before the second nocturnal piece returns. The pairing is structural: night surrounds the David address on side one, making sacred identity appear within searching rather than outside it.
In den Nächten auf den Gassen II
The second Nights in the Streets setting closes side one with greater duration and development. Familiar words return, but altered musical scale changes their emotional weight. Repetition now feels like continued searching rather than immediate recollection. Guitar, piano and percussion extend the night while Yun holds the human center. Because a later CD adds Part III, it is important to hear this second setting as the canonical first-side ending. The original LP deliberately leaves the search unresolved at the record turn; Der Winter ist vorbei opens the reverse with seasonal change rather than a direct answer.
Der Winter ist vorbei
Winter Is Past begins side two with release. Piano and plucked strings brighten the register, and rhythmic motion makes seasonal change physical. The biblical image describes renewal, but the track does not need an invented landscape or weather event. After the first side's night streets, the placement creates a clear formal dawn. Its concise duration prevents renewal from becoming complacent: the album moves quickly toward the sweetness of love. As a side opener, it is one of Popol Vuh's most economical examples of sequence making a familiar image carry new force.
Ja, deine Liebe ist süßer als Wein
Fichelscher's composition sets love sweeter than wine through melodic guitar, pulse and Yun's rising voice. The comparison is sensual and sacred at once, central to the Song of Songs rather than evidence of a hidden secular rewrite. Sitar and tabla colors can deepen the bodily sway, while piano keeps the harmonic direction clear. The track's position after winter's end turns renewal into tasted love. It is not simply the album's most accessible song; it demonstrates how Fichelscher's instrumental language can carry Fricke's textual project without losing its own identity.
Du Sohn Davids II
The second Son of David setting revisits lineage at a larger scale. Its longer duration allows piano, voice and guitar to circle the address, making recurrence feel devotional rather than redundant. The relationship to Part I is thematic and textual, not a claim that the two tracks were one performance split by the LP. Positioned between the wine comparison and the closing request for kisses, Part II restores sacred naming inside the second side's most embodied language. The album's achievement is clearest here: divine genealogy and intimate desire do not cancel each other.
Du tränke mich mit deinen Küssen
The finale asks to be given drink through kisses, joining thirst, touch and abundance. Fricke and Fichelscher share the composition credit, and the extended closing form lets voice, piano, guitar, sitar and percussion accumulate without a conventional rock climax. The request completes the side's movement from ended winter through sweeter-than-wine love to direct physical intimacy. It also completes the original album; later alternate sessions must not follow automatically. The closing sound presents love as a lived sacred force, matching Fricke's description of the complete record more precisely than a generic mystical label.
Song of Songs
Longing, search, winter and the sweetness of love
The album is a cycle of settings from the Song of Songs, with lyrics attributed to Solomon and arranged by Fricke. Fricke described the biblical work as a mystical love song and the album as dedicated to love. Desire appears through commands, praise, searching, taste and kisses rather than a detached theological explanation. Night streets provide a setting for absence and search on the first side.
The Son of David addresses introduce lineage and sacred identity twice. Winter's end creates the second side's seasonal release. Wine and kisses make bodily sensation integral to the sacred language. The recurring titles form a textual and emotional cycle, but the album does not document a fixed cast or linear dramatic adaptation.
United Artists
A United Artists frame for an intimate scripture
The original German United Artists edition carries catalogue number S 297811. The sleeve presents Popol Vuh's biblical title directly rather than marketing the album as a Werner Herzog soundtrack. The nine-track list is divided five-four across the LP. Repeated title families are visibly distinguished with Roman numerals.
That typography matters because later CDs add a third In den Nächten setting. National United Artists editions vary in catalogue details while retaining the same core programme. Later packages foreground alternate sessions and can make the album appear to contain twelve tracks. A faithful presentation keeps the nine original settings visually primary and labels all supplements as later.
Sixth album
A February session becomes the sixth album
United Artists released Das Hohelied Salomos in 1975. It is Popol Vuh's sixth studio album in the core chronology. The February Bavaria session is distinct from the preceding Einsjäger & Siebenjäger recording. Fricke and Langowski produced and mixed, with a documented two-engineer and two-assistant studio team.
No unsupported chart position or precise sales figure is attached here. Critical writing often emphasizes Yun's singing, Fichelscher's guitar and the expanded Indian instrumental color. The same year brought Aguirre, but that album collected work from different years and contexts. Letzte Tage – Letzte Nächte followed and moved the ensemble toward a heavier instrumental-vocal rock sound.
Sacred vocal peak
The vocal summit of Popol Vuh's mid-seventies cycle
The album stands as the most extensive Popol Vuh LP centered on Djong Yun's voice. Its nine concise settings show that repeated sacred text can create album form without a side-long title work. Fricke and Fichelscher consolidate a partnership between piano attack and singing guitar. Gromer and Kumar add specific sitar and tabla voices whose roles should not be blurred into vague world-music labeling.
The electronics credit connects the record to Popol Vuh's studio history without returning it to Affenstunde's Moog language. Later editions preserve valuable session variants but risk weakening the original ending. Its influence is best understood as a model of embodied sacred song rather than a claim to have invented spiritual rock. The record remains distinct because love is neither metaphorically removed from the body nor reduced to ordinary romance.
Original nine
Keep later sessions outside the nine-track LP
The canonical album contains nine tracks. In den Nächten I and II are original; Part III is later. Du Sohn Davids I and II are both original, distinct settings. Schön bist Du vor Menschensöhnen and Mitten im Garten are labeled alternate sessions on expanded editions.
Wanderschaft and Gib Hin are later additions on another reissue. The February 1975 technical credits belong to the original album. Djong Yun sings throughout the cycle, so Instrumental is invalid. Retain Du tränke mich mit deinen Küssen as the canonical ending.
A listening path
Follow the returning night and Son of David motifs
- Hear the first two tracks as invitation followed by recognition.
- Compare the two nocturnal settings around Du Sohn Davids I.
- Pause at the unresolved first-side ending.
- Let Der Winter ist vorbei reset the emotional climate.
- Follow the wine image into the expanded second Son of David setting.
- Give the closing request for kisses its complete finality.
- Explore alternate-session tracks only after the original nine-part cycle.
Research trail
Sources and further reading
- Original programme, liner credits, session data and Fricke interview — Popol Vuh archival discography
- Licensed 1975 programme and expanded-edition boundary — Spotify / Edition Popol Vuh
- Das Hohelied Salomos critical and catalogue context — Popol Vuh archive
- Popol Vuh core album chronology — MusicBrainz
- Popol Vuh profile and mid-seventies development — Popol Vuh archive