In Walt Disney’s “Fantasia,” the narrator, Deems Taylor, sets the film’s childhood-scarring climax on Walpurgis Night. Deems Taylor was wrong!
It’s actually tonight, St. John’s Eve, that the Slavic demon Chernobog emerges from the “Bare Mountain” (the translation preferred by Leopold Stokowski). For sure, there should be plenty of nudity on a good old-fashioned St. John’s Eve. And Disney obliges with bare-breasted harpies!
St. John’s Day holds a place on the Christian calendar akin to that of Christmas, in that it coincides, roughly (thanks to miscalculation by the Romans), with solstice time. For the pagan North, summer began on May Day. Midsummer was originally a pagan festival, which was co-opted by the Church into the observance of the birth of John the Baptist, which St. Luke implies took place six months before that of Jesus.
So while the actual summer solstice might occur anytime between June 20 and June 22, depending on the year, June 24 was designated the Feast Day of St. John.
St. John’s Eve is a time for leaping over bonfires. Doing so was believed to ensure prosperity and good luck. The bigger the fire, the further at bay were kept evil spirits. The further the evil spirits, the better the guarantee of a good harvest. If you didn’t light a bonfire… well, it was as good as tempting fate to burn your house down. It’s a time when dragons roam the earth, as the sun again pursues a southerly course. And it’s a time when witches are believed to rendezvous with powerful forces, such as Chernobog.
The idea for Modest Mussorgsky’s famous musical picture “A Night on Bald Mountain” haunted him for his entire creative life. In 1858, while still in his teens, he planned to write an opera on the subject of Nikolai Gogol’s short story, “St. John’s Eve.” A couple of years later, in 1860, he toyed with another projected opera called “The Witch.” Not long after, according to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, he wrote a diabolical piece for piano and orchestra under the influence of Franz Liszt’s “Totentanz.” If it was so, it has not survived.
It wasn’t until 1867 that Mussorgsky reconfigured the idea as an orchestral piece, “St. John’s Eve on Bald Mountain.” He began to compose it on June 12. He finished it on June 23 – ACTUALLY ON ST. JOHN’S EVE. Mussorgsky was ecstatic finally to have completed it. Then he showed it to his mentor, Mily Balakirev, who savaged it. The composer, no doubt ashamed, put it aside. This version of “A Night on Bald Mountain” would not be published until 1968.
Mussorgsky may have been cowed by Balakirev, but he was not done with his dream of a witches’ sabbath. In 1872, he revised and recast the material for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra, as part of Act III of the opera-ballet “Mlada,” a collaborative effort undertaken with his “Mighty Handful” fellows, Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin, and César Cui. In this new version the music was to form the basis of the “Night on Mount Triglav” scene. Mussorgsky now referred to the piece as “Glorification of Chernobog.”
Unfortunately, the “Mlada” project foundered, and again “Bald Mountain” sank into oblivion. “Glorification of Chernobog” was never published or performed and this version is now lost.
Mussorgsky took one more crack at it, as “Dream Vision of the Peasant Lad,” designed to serve as an intermezzo in his opera “Sorochyntsi Fair,” begun in 1874. He went back to the short story “St. John’s Eve,” from Gogol’s book “Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka.” The collection, steeped in Ukrainian lore, also proved to be a fount of inspiration for Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and others. If you can find an edition coupled with Gogol’s “Mirgorod” (which includes “Taras Bulba” and “Vij”), all the better.
Alas, the opera was left incomplete when Mussorgsky drank himself to death in 1881. There are at least five performing editions of the work, completed by other hands. Sadly, Mussorgsky NEVER HEARD “A Night on Bald Mountain,” in any of its versions, in his lifetime. How’s that for a sucker punch?
I’ve got the Sorochyntsi incarnation all cued up to the relevant passage at the link. If you’re interested in hearing the rest of the opera, you can drag the audio bar back to the beginning with your cursor.
For many years, this was the standard version, edited and orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov.
Disney is notoriously vigilant about guarding its content, but you can view the “Fantasia” segment here, the video posted for educational purposes. In the film, Mussorgsky’s music is heard in Stokowski’s orchestration.
With heat index values around here projected to push 110 through Wednesday, the idea of dancing around a bonfire is not exactly at the top of my list. On the other hand, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about catching a chill on the Bare Mountain.
