1 7-2 Final Project: Musical Exploration Kelsey Willard MUS 223 02/24/2024
2 The piece I chose is A Night on Bald Mountain by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. This piece was originally written by Modest Mussorgsky in June of 1867. The reason I selected this piece is because this scene in Fantasia is my favorite also this piece is largely associated with the celebration of Halloween which happens to be my favorite holiday. There are several musical elements that help make up this piece of work. The one that stands out the most is dynamics, which refers to the loudness or softness of a musical sound. In A Night on Bald Mountain, dynamics is used in many ways. The loudness is used when wanting to show the loud and fast pace of the music which can give the listener the feeling of anxiety. The softness is used to slow down the music and help calm the listener. Mussorgsky uses tone color or timbre to show the individual sounds of certain instruments to help paint different pictures and meanings throughout this piece. In the beginning, the music starts off soft and high-pitched as it gradually gets faster and deeper. Then it changes to music that I would associate with fast-blowing wind and danger approaching. After that the music calms again till around 2:00 then it speeds up again with music that sounds like something being chased. It ends with church bells and lighter- sounding music, it gives the feeling of something terrible being over or the end of a battle. This piece of work is new to me, I had never seen or listened to anything from Fantasia until this class. When I first listened to this piece of work, I was blown away. The music may be dark and chaotic, but it also has some type of beauty to it. This music has a dark mood to it, but it ends with church bells and lighter-sounding music which help bring in a happy light ending. The images this piece of work put in my mind are ones of a fierce battle, a battle of evil and darkness but with a light ending. There are several different instruments that make this piece come to life. The categories for these instruments are strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion. Modest Mussorgsky was originally telling a story of Russin legend about the witches' sabbath taking place on St. Johns night on Bald Mountain. These
3 instruments help tell his story in such a fantastic way that we are still listening and learning about it 157 years later. 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