Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (March 9/21, 1839 - March 16/28, 1881), one of five russian composers known as The
Mighty Handful, was an innovator of Russian music. His successes, and indeed many of the works of he and his
contemporaries, often drew from mediaeval Russian history, Russian folklore, and other nationalistic themes; this,
while often in deliberate defiance of established conventions of Western Music, towards a uniquely Russian musical
identity. His major works include the great national opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poem A Night on the
Bare Mountain, and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. For many years Mussorgsky's works were mainly known
in versions revised or completed by other composers; in most cases the original scores are now also available.
Night on Bald Mountain is a tone poem by Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, a Russian composer and member of The Five, Mily Balakirev\'s group dedicated to producing a distinctly Russian kind of music. The piece was originally inspired by a short story by Gogol in which a peasant witnesses a witches\' sabbath on the Bald Mountain near Kiev on St John\'s Eve. As with so much of this composer\'s music, the work had a tortuous compositional history, and is now known in several contrasting versions.
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