The history of the composition of Night on Bald Mountain is as confused and confusing as any piece Mussorgsky ever wrote. Originally conceived as an opera on a subject from Gogol in 1858 when Mussorgsky was an army cadet of 19, re-conceived in 1860 as incidental music to a drama which apparently didn't exist, re-re-conceived as a tone poem in 1866 and completed as a tone poem in the early summer of 1867, the work was then a wholly Russian and highly original orchestral tone poem which, in Mussorgsky's words, is "free from German profundity and routine."

That was, not, however, the end of St. John's Night. Mussorgsky revised his 1867 original version in approximately 1872 as his part of the joint commission for the composers of Balakirev's Mighty Handful, the ballet opera called Mlada. This version is lost. However, it is apparently the basis of the third and final version of the work.

In the late spring of 1880, less than a year before Mussorgsky's death at 42 from alcoholism, Mussorgsky unaccountably decided to re-re-re-conceive the work as an entr'acte with bass-baritone soloist, children's choir, mixed choir, and orchestra for his opera The Sorochintsky Fair. Based on Gogol story of a devil turned out of hell who had become a drunkard, Mussorgsky apparently thought that what had been St. John's Night would work as what was in effect a dream sequence in his never-to-be-completed opera.

In a letter to his friend Vladimir Stasov, Mussorgsky describes the work which is now called The Parobok's Dream Vision (The Peasant Boy's Dream Vision):

"The parobok sleeps at the foot of a hillock...In his sleep appear to him:

1. Subterranean roar of non-human voices, uttering non-human words.

2. The subterranean kingdom of darkness comes into its own—mocking the sleeping parobok.

3. Foreshadowing of the appearance of Chernobog (a Russian folk devil) and Satan.

4. The parobok left by the spirits of darkness. Appearance of Chernobog.

5. Worship of Chernobog and black mass.

6. Sabbath.

7. At the wildest moment of the Sabbath the sound of a Christian church bell. Chernobog suddenly disappears.

8. Suffering of the demons.

9. Voices of the clergy in church.

10. Disappearance of the demons and the parobok's awakening."

Every bit as savagely original and brutally Russian as the 1867 version, Mussorgsky's 1880 version seems not only extraneous to the plot of The Sorochintsky Fair, its size would seem too great for the opera to contain. However, since Mussorgsky never completed the opera, it is impossible to guess how The Parobok's Dream Vision might have fit into the opera.

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