# Please identify this classical music piece **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 3, 2015, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-identify-this-classical-music-piece/726876 "2015-08-03T12:10:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Alpha\_Twit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alpha_twit/32/265_2.png) [@Alpha\_Twit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alpha_Twit)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2015, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-identify-this-classical-music-piece/726876/1 "2015-08-03T12:10:17Z")
[LINK](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CNOcvSBkBE) to a Youtube page of the TV show _LEVERAGE_. Please fast forward to 22:50. What song is Nathan playing? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2015, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-identify-this-classical-music-piece/726876/2 "2015-08-03T12:26:50Z")
Night on Bald Mountain, Mussorgsky. ---
**Author:** ![Alpha\_Twit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alpha_twit/32/265_2.png) [@Alpha\_Twit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alpha_Twit)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2015, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-identify-this-classical-music-piece/726876/3 "2015-08-03T12:32:34Z")
Many thanks. I’ve heard this for years because it keeps cropping up in movies as all purpose ominous music. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-identify-this-classical-music-piece/726876/4 "2015-08-04T02:49:53Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > Night on Bald Mountain, Mussorgsky. Isn’t that the piece famously used in the “Halloween” segment of Fantasia? (ETA: [Picture.](http://filmfanatic.org/reviews/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Fantasia-Night-on-Bald-Mountain.png) ) ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-identify-this-classical-music-piece/726876/5 "2015-08-04T03:02:16Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Isn’t that the piece famously used in the “Halloween” segment of Fantasia? > > (ETA: [Picture.](http://filmfanatic.org/reviews/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Fantasia-Night-on-Bald-Mountain.png) ) You betcha butt, it is. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-identify-this-classical-music-piece/726876/6 "2015-08-04T03:35:10Z")
Since this is about music, let’s move it to Cafe Society. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-identify-this-classical-music-piece/726876/7 "2015-08-04T04:15:37Z")
The story of the work may be of some interest… It’s from the opera “The Fair at Sorochinsk,” or “Sorochinsky Fair.” The original version of “The Night on the Bare Mountain” is [a choral work, with made-up nonsense words, to evoke the chanting of a witches’ sabbath](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sEpa89mSm4). The opera is based on a play by Pushkin, which is based on a short story by Gogol. One of the characters in the story is a little pig-faced demon who got kicked out of hell because he couldn’t scare anybody. That’s the literary ancestor of the immense hellish Chernobog in the Disney animation! Talk about growing in the telling! ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-identify-this-classical-music-piece/726876/8 "2015-08-04T04:48:58Z")
From the Disney Wiki, it’s supposed to be [Walpurgisnacht](http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Night_on_Bald_Mountain/Ave_Maria), not Halloween. ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-identify-this-classical-music-piece/726876/9 "2015-08-04T14:11:21Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > The story of the work may be of some interest… > > It’s from the opera “The Fair at Sorochinsk,” or “Sorochinsky Fair.” The original version of “The Night on the Bare Mountain” is [a choral work, with made-up nonsense words, to evoke the chanting of a witches’ sabbath](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sEpa89mSm4). > > The opera is based on a play by Pushkin, which is based on a short story by Gogol. > > One of the characters in the story is a little pig-faced demon who got kicked out of hell because he couldn’t scare anybody. > > That’s the literary ancestor of the immense hellish Chernobog in the Disney animation! Talk about growing in the telling! Actually the _earliest_ version of the music was a tone poem composed by Mussorgsky in 1867, some seven years before he began work on _The Fair at Sorochinski_. Mussorgsky was very pleased with it, but could not get it performed–his mentor, Balakirev, refused it. Mussorgsky later reused the music, rearranged as a choral piece, for the opera. _The Fair at Sorochinski_, by the way, was incomplete when Mussorgsky died. Thus, he never heard any version of “Night on Bald Mountain” actually performed. The version used in _Fantasia_, and the one most familiar today, is a complete rescoring by Rimsky-Korsakov, done a few years after Mussorgsky’s death. Mussorgsky’s original title for the tone poem version, back in 1867, was “St. John’s Eve on Bald Mountain.” So if one wants to be really picky, the music is about neither Halloween nor Walpurgisnacht, but the feast day of St. John (June 23/24 on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia). Either way, it’s always been intended to represent a witch’s sabbat.