Night on Bald Mountain

In one of the most vivid works of horror, a mountain peak morphs into a demon that unfurls massive wings and glowing yellow eyes. The being summons specters from graveyards, who flock to the mountain. As the minions arrive, the demon seizes them and tosses them into the mountain’s inferno. Instead of dreading this fiery torment, the ghosts dance in revelry. The demon transforms the beings into fire maidens, then beasts, then elemental monsters, before a final form of spectral, fiery devils emerges, ostensibly ready to disseminate into the night to sow evil.

As the demon’s work reaches culmination, church bells and morning sunlight arrive, driving back the forces of darkness. The demon senses the inevitable, taking up his perch atop the mountain’s zenith, covering himself with his wings to await another shot at a conjuring night.

Driving the scene toward dread is a menacing orchestral motif. The instantly recognizable melody comes from Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky‘s 1867 tone poem, Night on Bald Mountain. Though Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria accompanies the procession of monks at the end of the piece, it’s Mussorgsky’s composition that gives the famous animation its name.

So striking was the mixture of music and monstrosity that Walt Disney and producer Ben Sharpsteen chose to end their classic 1940 film Fantasia with Night on Bald Mountain. Since then, the distinctive art style and spooky tune have become a staple of Halloween media.

It’s easy to see how such a composition would become linked to All Hallow’s Eve. Disney explicitly connected the holiday with Night on Bald Mountain in the segment’s introduction. Narrator Deems Taylor noted, “Here on Walpurgis Night, which is the equivalent of our own Halloween, the creatures of evil gather to worship their master.”

An 8th-century abbess from Francia, St. Walpurga gained the reputation of interceding against witchcraft. During the medieval and Renaissance periods, people became convinced that Walpurgis Night, or Saint Walpurga’s Eve, was a period of heightened witchcraft activity, similar to the ghoulish evolution of Halloween before the cleansing dates of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.

Interestingly, the lore behind Mussorgsky’s tone poem has nothing to do with Walpurgis Night or Halloween.

Early notes suggest Mussorgsky based his work on a short story by Nikolai Gogol, “St. John’s Eve.” Tradition suggests John the Baptist was born six months before Christmas, which coincides nicely with the Summer Solstice timeframe. In Slavic folk traditions that predate Christianity’s influence, the shortest night of the year was known as Kupala or Kupala Night. This festival was one of purification, love, and fertility. Historians point to a Proto-Slavic word, kǫpati, which means “to bathe,” as the origin of the holiday’s title. The idea of purifying waters dovetails perfectly with a baptizer named John; Kupala and St. John’s Eve merged into one tradition. Kupala, or St. John’s Eve, transpires on June 23.

In the Slavic tradition, Kupala was the most powerful night of the year. Like Halloween and Walpurgis Night, the positive celebrations somehow became entangled with nefarious beings. Witches supposedly spent the night gathering herbs and flowers they utilized in their dirty deeds. Both Gogol and Mussorgsky lean on witchcraft, with the composer setting his piece during a Witches’ Sabbath on St. John’s Eve. How Night on Bald Mountain became connected with Walpurgis Night and, through Disney, Halloween, is unclear. The connection to witches is obvious, so perhaps a conflation of the popular witchcraft dates slowly became reality.

In Slavic folklore (and other European traditions), witches gathered on so-called “bald mountains” or “bare mountains.”

Though the idea could be purely metaphorical, real locations across the continent gained a reputation as bald mountains used by witches. Gogol’s tale cites a particularly prominent example, called Lysa Hora, near Kyiv. Though Mussorgsky never mentions Lysa Hora, which translates to “Bald Mountain,” many historians believe he followed Gogol’s lead.

In Fantasia, Bald Mountain is a towering peak, worthy of a major demon. In reality, Lysa Hora is a modest (pun intended) hill near the center of Ukraine’s capital. Boasting an elevation of 531 feet (162 meters) above sea level, the spot doesn’t even make the list of Lysa Horas on Peakbagger (it’s certainly much shorter than the Lysa Hora in the Carpathians, which rises 4,357 feet (1,328 meters)).

When in relatively low country, though, witches likely can’t be beggars when it comes time to choose their bare mountains. Modern witches might want to look elsewhere, too, as Kyiv’s Lysa Hora is no longer bald.

The story of Night on Bald Mountain’s performance history is nearly as interesting and tragic as its mythological connections.

Though Mussorgsky found merit in the tone poem, his mentor excoriated the piece. Mily Balakirev refused to perform it, writing, “What rubbish” and “the devil knows what [this is]” in the margins of the score. Devastated, Mussorgsky largely abandoned the melodies.

The piece we know from Fantasia arrives thanks to another titan of classical music: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Five years after Mussorgsky died, Rimsky-Korsakov published an arrangement of his friend’s work as he went through his manuscripts for posterity. The original version of the tone poem wasn’t published until 1968, well after the release of Fantasia. Some scholars credit Night on Bald Mountain as much to Rimsky-Korsakov as to Mussorgsky.

To Mily Balakirev, only Chernobog (spelled Chernabog in Fantasia), a demon in Slavic folklore, might have known what was good in Mussorgsky’s original piece. Thankfully, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Walt Disney recognized the brilliance in Night on Bald Mountain, leaving us with a masterpiece of sound and horror.

The original version of the tone poem (with vocals!) is worthy of a listen, whether on Halloween, Walpurgis Night, St. John’s Eve, or any other date!