Modest Mussorgsky -- Night on Bald Mountain -- Score

Although most associated with Halloween, the tone poem Night on Bald Mountain actually refers to a specific date: The Eve of St. John's Day which is traditionally June 24th, the day after the Summer Solstice. The date harkens back to the Slavic pagan holiday of Kupala Night, a fertility celebration marking the shortest night of the year. Mussorgsky actually completed his initial version of the piece on the night in question, June 23 1867.

Mussorgsky never reached the stature of some of his contemporary Russian composers during his lifetime, and his mentor Mily Balakirev actually refused to perform this piece. It is mostly known in a version arranged by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, after Mussorgsky himself tried, without success, to adapt the piece to fit into some of his other projects. Nonetheless, the vivid depiction of a Witches' Sabbath and Adoration of Satan became such a striking piece that it developed its own reputation, one in our popular culture most closely identified with its sequence in the 1940 animated film Fantasia.

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