Like nearly every piece Mussorgsky wrote, the compositional history of Night on Bald Mountain is convoluted to the point of near total confusion.

The work was first mentioned by the 19-year-old Mussorgsky on Christmas Day 1858 when he and his brother and a few other friends including Mussorgsky's composition teacher Mily Balakirev, proposed a three-act opera on the subject of Gogol's St. John's Eve. A year and a half later, Mussorgsky writes to Balakirev to tell him that he has been commissioned "to set to music of whole of act of [Baron] Mengden's drama The Witch depicting a witches' Sabbath on St. John's Night." There is not, however, any trace of either a commission nor a drama by Mengden called The Witch. Six years later, Mussorgsky mentions the piece again, this time as an orchestra tone-poem, in a letter dated April 20, 1866, to Balakirev: "I have started outlining the witches. Got into trouble. Satan's journey does not please me yet."

After completing the original version of the work on June 23, 1867, now called St. John's Night, that is, midsummer night, the night of the witches' Sabbath, Mussorgsky wrote the following description of the work to Rimsky-Korsakov, his friend and fellow composition student with Balakirev:

"All your favorite bits came off splendidly in the scoring. In the Black mass there is a bit in B minor (the witches glorifying Satan), thoroughly foul and barbarous....The form is rather original....The whole thing is fiery, brisk, close-knit without German transactions. In my opinion St. John's Night is something new, and ought to produce a satisfactory impression on any thinking musician."

Mussorgsky also wrote a description of the work to his friend Professor Nikolsky:

"My St. John's Night on the Bald Mountain (A far better title than The Witches) is, in form and character, Russian and original;...I wrote it very quickly[!], straight-away in full score without preliminary rough drafts, in twelve days. It seethed within me, and I worked day and night, hardly knowing what was happening within me. And now I see in my sinful prank an independent Russian product, free from German profundity and routine, and, like my Savishna (the song O Darling Savishna!), grown on our country's soil and nurtured on Russian bread.

At the head of my score I've put its contents: 1. Assembly of the witches, their talk and gossip; 2. Satan's journey; 3. Obscene praises of Satan [titled in the score Black mass]; and 4. Sabbath....The form and character of composition are both Russian and original."

The original St. John's Night is indeed wholly Russian and highly original. Compared with Rimsky's tepid reorchestration and turgid recomposition, it is an infinitely more characteristic and effective work.

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Night on Bald Mountain (Ivanova noch' na Lisoy gore, symphonic poem; excerpt)

In a July 5, 1867 letter to Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Modest Mussorgsky wrote "(I have) finished St. John's Night on Bald Mountain, a musical picture with the following program: (1) assembly of the witches, their chatter and gossip; (2) cortege of Satan; (3) unholy gratification of Satan; and (4) witches' sabbath." Mussorgsky proclaims "in form and character my composition is Russian and original. Its tone is hot and chaotic.... St. John's Night is something new and is bound to produce a satisfactory impression...."

The impression was not so satisfactory for Mily Balakirev, who rejected the work in 1869 from consideration for a Free School concert. Balakirev sent the manuscript back to Mussorgsky bearing handwritten marks such as the comment "Rubbish!" in the margins. Later, under the spell of Liszt's Totentanz, Mussorgsky considered refashioning the movement as a piano/orchestral work, but nothing came of this plan.

In May 1877, Mussorgsky drew up the scenario of his comic opera Sorochintsy Fair, proposing an extensive revision of the St. John's Night music as an Intermezzo opening the third act. Mussorgsky completed this part of the opera in 1880, retaining music from (1) and (3) of the original work, and adding new material. Identified as "Dream of the Young Peasant Lad," this also had a new program: as a boy dreams on a hill, he is threatened by inhuman voices and finds himself mocked in the realm of shadows. The voices warn of the Devil and the "Black God" Chernobog; as the shadows fade, both appear. Chernobog is glorified, a Black Mass is sung, and a Witches' Sabbath breaks out. As a church bell intones, Chernobog disappears and the demons writhe in agony. A church choir sings, the demons fade away, awakening the boy. Mussorgsky was never to complete Sorochintsy Fair.

In 1867 letter quoted above, Mussorgsky wrote Rimsky-Korsakov "I should like us to examine the orchestration together (...) we might clear up many things." Rimsky-Korsakov fulfilled his end of the bargain in 1886, five years after Mussorgsky's death, in producing Night on Bald Mountain (also "Night on the Bare Mountain"). This was the "Lad's Dream" music, minus its choral parts and with its abrupt, dramatic effectual "stings" removed. The first half of the second section was removed, and Rimsky-Korsakov dropped most of the major-key material save a brief fanfare figure. The whole work was subjected to a streamlining of orchestration and meter, and divided into symmetrical sections. Rimsky-Korsakov has often been accused of "composing" the "Matins Bell" section that concludes Bald Mountain, but in truth the music is all Mussorgsky's save the final flute trio at the very end. The Rimsky-Korsakov edition was an immediate worldwide success from the day it was launched and helped to establish Mussorgsky's name. It remains the most popular version of Mussorgsky's famous piece, although the original versions are available in modern editions and are revived to acclaim as well. Some conductors, such as Claudio Abbado and Esa-Pekka Salonen, have made personal specialties of the 1867 version.

© Uncle Dave Lewis , Rovi

Night on Bald Mountain (Ivanova noch' na Lisoy gore, symphonic poem; ed. by Stokowski)

Upon reading Gogol's classic Russian short story "St. John's Eve" in 1858, the young Modest Mussorgsky found the perfect narrative vehicle for the dark, dense musical language he was beginning to develop. The shortest night of the year, June 23, St. John's Eve is known in Russian folklore as the night in which witches and demons gather on Bald Mountain (now known as Mount Triglav, near Kiev), for a yearly "Black Mass" and devilish revelry lasting until dawn. Despite the vividness of the scenario and Mussorgsky's original realization of it in 1867, the composer struggled to cast the music in its ideal voice, off and on, for the rest of his career. It appeared unfinished in various forms, including a version with chorus meant for a ballet, as well as an operatic intermezzo. And although a few conductors in recent years, including Claudio Abbado and Esa-Pekka Salonen, have given successful performances of the original 1867 version, the one most familiar to modern audiences is the version completed in 1886 by Mussorgsky's friend, Rimsky-Korsakov, known as Night on Bald Mountain. The famous conductor Leopold Stokowski, however, was so unsatisfied with the 1886 orchestration that he traveled to Russia, studied Mussorgsky's manuscripts himself, and in 1938, prepared his own orchestration. Writing in the notes accompanying his 1954 recording of the work, Stokowski explained that Rimsky-Korsakov "had more technical skill than Mussorgsky, and so generously, and with good intentions, gave of his precious time to assist his friend." The problem, however, was that Rimsky-Korsakov "sometimes misunderstood Mussorgsky's uncompromising originality in harmony and rhythm." In other words, Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestrational skill rendered the diabolical scene altogether too tidily. Stokowski's version sought to mediate between Mussorgsky's visceral, weighty sonority and Rimsky-Korsakov's skill at instrumental balance and contrast. There is, perhaps, a natural affinity between Stokowski's orchestral sound—which is often characterized as bombastic, vivid, with a low center of gravity, and a broadness of gesture—and Mussorgsky's compositional style, which for Stokowski betrays an obsession with "the dark, fantastic, grotesque, mysterious, and terrifying side of life." Ultimately, however, Stokowski's more exaggerated orchestral realization of Mussorgsky's demonic fascinations serve to contrast all the more starkly the visions of dawn that end the work: the early morning church bells, the bird call of an oboe solo, and the peasant song of a lone flute.

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