Night On The Bare Mountain by Mussorgsky arr. Janos Kovacs

Night on the Bare Mountain is a tone poem written by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1867.  

Mussorgsky (1839-1881) was an innovator of the Romantic period but had a troubled life and died early, not leaving many works behind. He proved to be very influential on later Russian pioneers such as Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich, thus shaping the history of modern music.  

Night on the Bare Mountain started out as several early projects that Mussorgsky worked on and abandoned, first an opera, then a work for piano and orchestra that centered mainly on the theme of witches’ sabbath, a notion that by the 19th century had turned from taboo to romantic fascination. Among Mussorgsky’s inspirations were Russian folk legends, pagan Midsummer festivities, Nikolai Gogol’s short story St. John’s Eve, and a play called The Witch by Georgiy Mengden.  

Later on Mussorgsky crystallized the work into its final form, a striking tone poem of very descriptive, almost visual quality. It illustrates a witches’ gathering taking place on St. John’s Night (or Midsummer) on the Lysa Hora (or Bald Mountain), which is an actual place near Kiev. The witches engage in ritualistic dance and summon Satan, who arrives and sits on a throne while being sung praises to. The sabbath escalates into a shuddersome frenzy and ends in a dissonant crash.  

The piece was never performed during Mussorgsky’s lifetime but became famous in the form of an orchestration that Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov wrote in 1886. Rimsky-Korsakov revised and made changes to the initial score, most importantly toning down its savage energy and giving it a positive and hopeful ending where dawn and church bells scare the witches and demons away. Mussorgsky’s original score was rediscovered in the 1920’s, but it was Rimsky-Korsakov’s version that endured. It gained a new wave of popularity when it was featured in the 1940 Disney animated film Fantasia.  

Well into the 21st century, Night on the Bare Mountain still surprises with its modern, visually compelling, almost horror movie-like character.