June 23rd is St. John’s Eve – that is to say, the day before the Nativity of John the Baptist, the Christian Feast Day that celebrates the forerunner and baptizer of Jesus. But more on that tomorrow.

St. John’s Eve just happens to be the setting for one of the best scary pieces ever written – A Night on Bald Mountain (also titled “St. John’s Eve on the Bare Mountain”), by Modest Mussorgsky. The spooky music speaks for itself. Mussorgsky himself describes how he wrote the piece. I thoroughly enjoy his words (taken from a letter to a friend), because he makes the compositional process seem like a compulsive, drunken all-nighter, with plenty of Russian resentment against the Germans:

“So far as my memory doesn’t deceive me, the witches used to gather on this mountain, … gossip, play tricks and await their chief—Satan. On his arrival, the witches formed a circle round the throne on which he sat, and sang his praise. When Satan was worked up into a sufficient passion by the witches’ praises, he gave the command for the sabbath, in which he chose for himself the witches who caught his fancy. So this is what I’ve done. At the head of my score I’ve put its content:

1. Assembly of the witches, their talk and gossip;
2. Satan’s journey;
3. Obscene praises of Satan;
4. Sabbath

The form and character of the composition are Russian and original … I wrote St. John’s Eve quickly, straight away in full score, I wrote it in about twelve days, glory to God … While at work on St. John’s Eve I didn’t sleep at night and actually finished the work on the eve of St. John’s Day, it seethed within me so, and I simply didn’t know what was happening within me … I see in my wicked prank an independent Russian product, free from German profundity and routine, and grown on our native fields and nurtured on Russian bread.”

This piece is now pretty much universally recognized as one of the best parts of Disney’s 1940 film, Fantasia, which also included masterworks such as The Rite of Spring and the Pastoral Symphony.

Against all odds – right as the onset of the Cold War, a Soviet composer’s piece became a #1 hit with American Art Music audiences. Aram Khachaturian (who would today be considered Georgian, not Soviet) wrote a ballet called Gayane, whose plot was common for pretty much any Soviet art of the time: Gayane, a good, patriotic, and hard-working Soviet, finds out her lazy drunk of a husband has turned against the state! She tries to correct his behavior, but like anyone who hates the state, he is pure evil. Naturally, her attempt to correct his anti-Soviet thinking forces him to stab her. The husband is jailed, Gayane survives, and ends up falling in love with a good Soviet boy. The two marry and become model, productive citizens, the highest good one can achieve.

Awwwww … so sweet …

At some point in this amazing love story, people come out and dance with sabres. This dance became wildly popular, and ended up being used in many popular songs as well as figure skating routines.

Everyone seems to want a piece of May 1st. Is it just about spring, or is it a religious festival, or day to celebrate the labor movement?

It’s a bit confusing, but then again, so is the Second Symphony of Dimitri Shostakovich. Written when the composer was barely 21 (which means, as a Russian, he was had been drinking vodka legally for only 9 years), it portrays the story of the October Revolution – not about May, but about the Soviet revolution, and therefore the labor movement. Shotakovich himself was a bit confusing, too, since he started his career as the Bolshevik poster boy, then he was shunned by the Soviets, then he was loved again, then he was hated again. Then he joined the communist party. Whatever, I’m confused; but so were audiences when the Second Symphony was first performed. The Russian laborers were baffled by the modernist, murmuring beginning that was void of any traditional melody or harmony – but were moved by the rousing revolutionary chorus that concludes the piece. Meanwhile, western European audiences loved the progressive beginning part, but were turned off by the cheesy revolutionary chorus.

Now I’m completely confused. I’m going to go back to circling a Maypole.