Night on Bald Mountain – also known by its Russian namen Noch′ na lysoy gore. I have loved this piece for ages. When I was a child, on Saturday mornings the local ABC affiliate would broadcast Creature Feature which was a, usually, really bad horror movie that was cheap to broadcast because it was awful. The broadcast would always be accompanied by this music, so of course I always associated it with horror, Halloween, and all else occult. Truly Scary!
I started this recording in 2008, and I think I am closing in on a completed version. It is a tone poem about a gathering of witch’s intent on casting a spell. It was originally composed by Mussorgsky but his version was “reimagined” by Rimsky-Korsakov as an orchestral fantasy and I used his score as my inspiration.
I did it in the style of Tomita, imaging which instruments Mussorgsky would have chosen if he had a modern synthesizer available to him. Any comments on the mix would be appreciated. This work is 30 tracks of audio and represents strings, horns, woodwinds, percussion and harps.
This is text from the original performance pamphlet: “Subterranean sounds of non-human voices. Appearance of the spirits of darkness, followed by that of Chernobog. Glorification of Chernobog and Black Service. Sabbath. At the height of the sabbath, the distant ringing of a village church bell is heard; it disperses the spirits of darkness. Morning.“
I think it is “spooktacular“!
I created this video to go along with the audio, it is just a bunch of slides I got from the web. Boo!