Song 187 (Modest Petrovitch Mussorgsky-"Night on Bald Mountain")

Continuing my workweek of "The Five" I decided on choosing my favourite of the "Mighty Handful:" Modest Mussorgsky. He was the extremest of the group with his Russian nationalism in his music. When I first heard his music my first impression was that it is insanity put to music, plus the popular portrait of him seemed to re-affirm this. All of his music has a lot of passion to it and is quite powerful. One of the aspects of his career that was interesting, but not unexpected, is that most of his contemporaries reviled him as a composer. His career also paralleled a lot of modern day musicians in that he was a substance abuser in the extreme and died young. However, this was normal in the day to protest by having an extreme lifestyle.
This song, "Night on Bald Mountain" is probably his most famous piece of music today and was used in the Disney film Fantasia in the scene with the demon and skeletal warriors.

Here is an orchestral performance of the song on YouTube.
Here is Disney's Fantasia version on YouTube.

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