Kelsey Willard Professor Medina Mus-223 February 10, 2024 Milestone Three Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer who composed Night on Bald Mountain from 1860 - 1867. This put Modest Mussorgsky in the initial stages of the romantic period in music which extended from 1820 to 1900. There are several elements that place Night on Bald Mountain in the Romantic period. Nationalism is the inclusion of folksongs, dances, legends, and other national material in a composition to associate it with the composer's homeland. This is also a characteristic of romantic music (Kamien, 2022, P. 266). Modest Mussorgsky shows nationalism in Night on Bald Mountain because he was inspired by a Russian legend that tells the tale of nocturnal revels that take place in June on St. John's Night near Kiev. He uses tails from his homelands in his music which gives it a more universal character. Romantic composers used the power of the brass section and woodwinds section to create greater emotional intensity. Modest used flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, trombones, tubas, percussion, and strings to create the wonderful Night on Bald Mountain. He, just like many romantic composers, explored new chords to emphasize rich, colorful, and complex harmonies. Romantic music also included sharp contrasts between faint whispers and sonorities of unprecedented power (Kamien, 2022, P.267). Modest Mussorgsky used a lot of faint whispers and unprecedented power to tell the dark story of Night on Bald Mountain. Mussorgsky definitely used many elements of the Romantic period to compose Night on Bald Mountain which to this day is still being listened to and enjoyed all over the world.
Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain was written and inspired to tell a story, this is defined as program music. Night on Bald Mountain was inspired by a legend of a demon named Chernobog who leads the dead until the far-off church bells disperse the Spirits of Darkness. He wanted to use his inspirations to create a one-act opera based on The Eve of Ivan Kupala written by Nikolai Gogol. That idea eventually did not work out but instead, he created a piece for orchestra called St. Johns Night on the Bare Mountain. This version did not become popular but after several modifications and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's revisions A Night on Bald Mountain was performed on October 27, 1886. Mussorgsky's original ending was described as brutal and savage, Rimsky-Korsakov's revisions of the ending was described as peaceful. The most famous version of Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain is in Walt Disney's 1940 film Fantasia. This version is led by Leopold Stokowski, and he based this version on the arrangement done by Rimsky-Korsakov.