The night on bald mountain mussorgsky biography

It’s October, and the urge for theatrical, spooky music always arises for me right about this time. Cue a visit to the essay I wrote years back, “Ten Spooky Classical Faves for Halloween.” Each year, it seems, I have a different relationship with the music and its composers. This year, I’m taking a particular interest in Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, a tone-poem depiction of a witches’ sabbath that draws from Russian folklore. It’s turbulent, troubling, dramatic, and spicy, which also sort of describes Modest Mussorgsky himself, certainly in the second half of his life. It’s fascinating to consider, then, that he came into the world amid genteel, prosperous circumstances. Born March 21, 1839 in Karevo, a village in the Russian province of Pskov, he was raised on a big estate, trained in the most proper of ways. His father, a lover of music, allowed his son to dabble in music—the boy was prodigiously good at the piano—but nonetheless he was sent to cadet school in anticipation of a career as a military officer.

Upon completion of his education, Modest was every inch the polished young officer, popular with his peers, impressing the ladies, fond of drink and nights of reveling, where he liked to show off his skills on the piano to further impress the ladies. Alexander Borodin, also a young army officer (whose destiny would intertwine with Modest’s for decades as members of Russia’s Group of Five), met Modest around this time and described him thus:

He was at that time a very callow, most elegant, perfectly contrived little officer: brand-new, close-fitting uniform, toes well turned out, hair well-oiled and carefully smoothed-out, hands shapely and well cared for. His manners were polished and aristocratic. He spoke through his teeth, and his carefully chosen words were interspersed with French phrases. He showed signs of a slight pretentiousness, but also, quite unmistakably, of perfect breeding and educatio

About this Piece

Mussorgsky tried many times to write the music that we know today as Night on Bald Mountain, and he never got it into satisfactory form. He first had the idea for this music in 1860, when at age 21 he thought about writing an opera based on Gogol’s story St. John’s Eve. Soon this turned into plans for a one-act opera based on Baron Mengden’s play The Witches, and at the center of both of these was to be a horrifying witches’ sabbath. But these plans for a stage work came to nothing. Then in 1867 Mussorgsky told Rimsky-Korsakov that he had completed what he called a “tone-picture” for orchestra, now titled St. John’s Night on the Bare Mountain. He was very proud of this music, saying that he considered “this wicked prank of mine a really Russian and original achievement, quite free from German profundity and routine, born...on Russian soil and nurtured on Russian corn.” 

And then to Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky made a defiant statement that would prove spectacularly wrong: “Let it clearly be understood...that I shall never start remodeling it; with whatever shortcomings it is born, and with them it must live if it is to live at all.” This high resolve lasted until Mussorgsky’s mentor Mily Balakirev saw the score, savaged it, and refused to allow it to be performed. Badly stung, Mussorgsky set the manuscript aside. He liked the music well enough that he kept reworking it, but he never heard any of these versions before he died of alcohol poisoning in a Moscow sanitarium at age 42. 

In the years after his death, the composer’s friends tried to get his chaotic manuscripts into performing order, and in 1886 Rimsky-Korsakov turned to the St. John’s Eve music. Instead of simply going back to Mussorgsky’s purely orchestral version of 1867, Rimsky felt free to draw upon the music in all of its subsequent incarnations: “When I started putting it in order with the intention of creating a workable concert piece, I took everything I considered

The story behind A Night on The Bare Mountain

A Night On The Bare Mountain describes a short story in which St John sees a witches' Sabbath on the Bald Mountain near Kiev in the old Russian Empire.

It's a wild and terrifying party with lots of dancing but when the church bell chimes 6am and the sun comes up the witches vanish.

Modest Mussorgsky wrote a number of different versions of this pieces of music. When he was finally satisfied with it, his music teacher told him it wasn't good enough so he put it aside for years.

Eventually his friend and fellow composer Rimsky-Korsakov re-arranged the music for orchestra and this is the piece we know today.

Listen out for: The unsettled strings with trombones, tuba and bassoons thundering out the theme. The very rhythmic oboes and clarinets are quite a contrast.

This piece is all about the fury and frenzy of a wild and terrifying witches’ party. The whole orchestra is playing together creating a dense and intimidating atmosphere. All the sections of the orchestra play busy, loud and chaotic parts adding to the night time frenzy. As dawn breaks, we hear the instruments suddenly fall silent. A much thinner texture represents the first light of morning and the fact the witches and other wild creatures have left. A solitary bell plays at 2’17” above wind instruments then the upper strings join in a much thinner texture compared to that of the earlier music.

The Romantic Period:
Last month we learned about Mozart who was composing music during the Classical period of Western Music History. Mussorgsky, who was born 83 years later, was composing during the Romantic period which took place in the 19th Century.
Composers from this period moved away from the formality of classical music and poured emotion, energy and passion into their pieces. Where Classical had reason, order and rules, Romantic was emotion, adventure and imagination. Music was used to evoke stories, places or events.
Romantic music has all features of music from the Classical period, but with much more of it! This means:

• The tunes got longer and stronger.
• The louds got louder and the quiets got quieter.
• The mood changes were much bigger and happened more often.
• The orchestras got bigger.

Famous composers from this period include:

• Peter Tchaikovsky
• Johannes Brahms
• Clara Schumann
• Fanny Mendelssohn
   

Find out more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DSjjXQaF-g

Further listening:
A beautiful sand animation set to Night on Bare Mountain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXyXsItn_wQ

Watch a youth orchestra play Night on Bare Mountain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGl-FM30Pzw
 

Listen to Night on Bare Mountain played on an organ:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkZZZXLN9Jw

Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WcBkwHjU84

Ballet of the Unhatched Chick from Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAtAvF2cepg

Ballet of the Unhatched Chick played on the piano:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWY4QIMsKBQ