31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN (DAY 15)
On this date in 1886, Modest Mussorgsky’s “A Night on Bald Mountain” was given its posthumous debut. The premiere took place in St. Petersburg, with the Russian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Mussorgsky’s rough-hewn textures, idiosyncratic harmony, slap-dash orchestration, and illogical modulations were often viewed as “mistakes” by his well-intentioned contemporaries. The composer was notoriously fond of alcohol, flamboyantly reckless, until a series of seizures sent him into a rapid decline. A week after his 42nd birthday, Modest Mussorgsky was dead.
Understandably, many of the artistic choices of this raging bull of a man were regarded with skepticism and even pity.
It is through the arrangements, revisions and completions of his friend, Rimsky-Korsakov, that “A Night on Bald Mountain,” “Boris Godunov,” and “Khovanschina” became world-famous. It is only in recent decades that Mussorgsky’s original thoughts have been reassessed. And you know what? The guy may have been a total slob, but he was brilliant.
“A Night in Bald Mountain” exists in several incarnations, the first dating all the way back to 1867. It was a symphonic poem; it was outfitted with a chorus for a collaborative project by members of the Mighty Handful (the opera-ballet “Mlada”); and it was plugged into one of Mussorgsky’s own operas, “Sorochinsky Fair,” left incomplete at the time of the composer’s death.
Some fifty years after “Bald Mountain’s” debut in the Rimsky edition, Leopold Stokowski made his own arrangement for the Walt Disney classic, “Fantasia.” And it’s been scaring the hell out of little kids ever since. Happy Hallowe’en!
Behold, the demon Chernabog:
“The Scary Origins of Disney’s Most Evil Character”
