The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (Original Score and Variations)

The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (Die große Ekstase des Bildschnitzers Steiner, 1974), this previously unreleased score by the German musical collective Popol Vuh accompanies the extraordinary flights of Swiss ski flyer and woodcarver Walter Steiner. Internationally celebrated for his record-breaking ski flying in the 1970s, Steiner (born 1951) became a two-time world champion and earned the nickname "the bird man." Popol Vuh's ethereal score elevates Steiner's flights beyond the realm of sporting achievement, giving musical form to what Herzog would later call "ecstatic truth": a poetic reality that reaches beyond objective fact toward a deeper emotional and spiritual experience.

Herzog saw Steiner not simply as a medal-winning athlete, but as someone pursuing "dreams of flight," whose ski flying and work as a woodcarver were driven by the same desire to escape gravity. Together, Popol Vuh's transcendent score and Herzog's use of slow motion stretch each flight beyond its physical limits until it becomes almost sculptural—a suspended moment where human aspiration meets physical vulnerability and the fear of death. Rather than following the trajectory of the jump itself, Popol Vuh's music reaches its crescendo only after the decisive moment has passed. It is a crescendo not of triumph, but of suspension and profound solitude.

The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner is one of Werner Herzog's most important films and marks an early expression of the themes that would come to define his cinema. Time and again, Herzog is drawn to individuals who push beyond fear and the physical limits of the body, pursuing visions and ambitions that exist at the very edge of possibility. To accompany this release, three contemporary artists—james K, ML Buch, and Lorenzo Senni—revisit Popol Vuh's original soundtrack. Their reinterpretations create a dialogue across five decades, revealing the enduring resonance of Popol Vuh's music and its remarkable capacity to continue evoking wonder, contemplation, and transcendence.