Musorgsky: St John's Night on Bare Mountain (Orginal Version)

Modest Musorgsky (1839-1881)
St. John’s Night on Bare Mountain (original version)

Of the group of composers who congregated around Balakirev in the 19th century to forge a new Russian music, Musorgsky is among the most famous, and yet little heard. Although many of his titles are well-known, the music itself is very rarely heard as the composer intended. Pictures at an Exhibition is much more familiar in Ravel’s orchestral adaptation, while the 1867 tone poem St. John’s Night on Bare Mountain (or Night on the Bare Mountain as it is more widely known) was never performed in his lifetime, nor even published until 1968. The version usually heard is a posthumous rewrite by Rimsky-Korsakov, and so utterly different in its conception as to constitute an entirely different work that happens to use some of the same themes.

The roots of Bare Mountain lie as far back as 1858, when Musorgsky made tentative plans to compose an opera on Gogol’s short story St. John’s Eve. No trace remains of this, but two years later he wrote to Balakirev that he was working on a libretto by Georgy Mengden called The Witch. This too is lost, but apparently contained “a whole act to take place on Bare Mountain... a witches’ sabbat... I already have some material for it; it may turn out to be a very good thing.” In 1866 Musorgsky heard Liszt’s Totentanz, which made a great impact on him. Inspired by that and by a book on witchcraft he had recently read, he began to plan a new work, initially titled The Witches. In July 1867 he wrote to Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov to announce the completion on St. John’s Eve of St. John’s Night on Bare Mountain.

If Musorgsky hoped for enthusiasm from his teacher, he was disappointed: Balakirev was harshly critical of the piece and refused to perform it. Musorgsky revised the work twice: in 1872-3 he reworked it as a chorus for the collaborative opera Mlada. This version is lost, but was almost certainly the basis for the second revision, intended for his unfinished opera Sorochintsy Fair. It was this version that served as the basis for Rimsky-Korsakov’s reimagining of Night on Bare Mountain.

Musorgsky’s original is considerably more raucous than Rimsky's smoother rewrite (in particular the familiar quiet ending is entirely absent), and in its adventurous and aggressive harmonies it is a good 30 years ahead of its time. In a letter to Rimsky, Musorgsky identified four sections to the work: “(1) Assembly of the witches, their chatter and gossip; (2) cortege of Satan; (3) unholy glorification of Satan; and (4) witches’ sabbat.” Musorgsky is often considered not to be an effective orchestrator, but the cautiousness he exhibits in later music is perhaps a result of the criticism of Bare Mountain by Balakirev. Certainly in his first major work for orchestra he is gloriously unconstrained by any sense of propriety, and the result is a relentless and thoroughly exciting slice of devilry.