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Ten Pieces - A Night on the Bare Mountain

Discover how Mussorgsky creates a spooky musical story. Listen for sudden changes in mood, volume and instruments, and spot how ideas return to build tension.

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Fascinating Fact:

Quick changes between different instrument groups can help build suspense, because the sound keeps shifting and surprising the listener.

In KS2 Music, this piece is a brilliant way to explore how composers create atmosphere. Pay attention to tempo, dynamics and texture, and how the orchestra can suggest action, danger or mystery.

Key Terms

Dynamics: How loud or quiet the music is, and how it changes.
Texture: How many musical parts are heard at once, from a single line to many layered sounds.
Motif: A short musical idea that returns and helps you recognise the piece.

Frequently Asked Questions (Click to see answers)

What is A Night on the Bare Mountain about?

A Night on the Bare Mountain is programme music that aims to suggest a spooky scene. The music uses dramatic contrasts and fast changes to create an unsettling atmosphere.

What is programme music in KS2?

Programme music is music that tells a story or describes a scene without words. Composers do this using mood, tempo, dynamics, and different instruments.

How can I describe the mood of this music?

You can describe the mood by naming what you hear, such as fast tempo, sudden loud dynamics, and sharp orchestral sounds. Then link those features to feelings like tense, eerie or dramatic.

Try These Related Quizzes

1 .

In an age before films etc. as we now know and love them, colourful orchestral pieces such as Night on a Bare Mountain developed as a spectacular, dramatic way of catching an audience's imagination. If the piece set out to 'tell a story' it was known as Programme Music, but the orchestral form was known by a further special label. What are such pieces (like Sibelius' later Finlandia) called?

Orchestral pictures

Sound stories

Tone poems

Musical movies

This is the usual and correct musicological term for such works

2 .

Which section of the orchestra is used early on to suggest the sound of the scampering witches?

The lower strings

The percussion

The upper woodwinds

The brass

The flutes and reeds (oboe, clarinet) produce a suitably 'squawky' effect when playing quickly like this

3 .

On what occasion is the Night supposed to have taken place?

The night of St John's Day, very shortly after midsummer

Hallowe'en

The autumn equinox (late September)

Midwinter

At least that night would have been relatively short and not too cold ...

4 .

Which instrument is used to mark the moment of midnight?

The gong

The tubular bells (or rather, just one of them)

The cymbals

The horn

The almost immemorial sound of a bell (as with the harp, in its different way) is an immediately recognisable and evocative signal

5 .

Also as with Pictures at an Exhibition, Night on a Bare Mountain was not originally written by Mussorgsky as an orchestral piece: the orchestral version (in this case) was arranged by one of his friends in the composers' circle known as 'the Five'. Which of them did it?

Miliy Balakirev

Cesar Cui

Alexander Borodin

Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov

One of Rimsky-Korsakov's own other better-known compositions, also describing 'flying things', is his Flight of the Bumble-Bee (which as you'd expect, is short and pretty quick!)

6 .

When Walt Disney put together a series of musical pieces (including this one as its grand finale) with moving cartoon images in colour, in 1940, what was the title of the film?

Silly Symphonies

Toccata and Fugue

Fantasia

Sound Surround

All the other (wrong) answers are broadly relevant, but No.3 is the correct title of this groundbreaking popular musical education project. You might like to explore that too and compare its choice of pieces with the BBC's 'Ten', some 75 years later! (Some of which hadn't yet been written back then, of course ... )

7 .

Which of these instruments is used in the piece, apart from the 'regular' sections of the orchestra?

Piano

Celesta

Harp

Organ

Nothing else can quite evoke the sense of a magical dream as the harp can!

8 .

There is another 'Bald Mountain' outside Vienna, but where is the one in this piece supposed to be?

In ancient Greece

Near Kiev in Ukraine

In the Russian Steppes

In the Alps

This is the same Kiev whose Great Gate features in the final movement of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition

9 .

Which of these best describes the overall shape of the piece?

It begins slowly and quietly, and gradually grows louder and faster

It begins slowly and loudly, then becomes faster but quieter towards the end

It starts quickly and quietly, then grows slower and louder

It starts quickly and loud, then ends slowly and calmly

If you want a piece that 'goes the other way' (like Answer 1 here), try our Grieg selection In the Hall of the Mountain King!

10 .

40 or so years before this piece was ever heard, another composer had written an orchestral 'movement' depicting (as this one also does) a 'witches' sabbath', using not-dissimilar musical effects at certain points. What was this other earlier work?

Beethoven's 7th Symphony

Hector Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique

Paradise Lost in a setting by Haydn

An opera by Verdi

If you like this kind of music, you may find it an interesting 'comparative listen'

You can find more about this topic by visiting BBC - KS2: Modest Mussorgsky - A Night on the Bare Mountain

Author: Ian Miles (Linguist, ESL and RE Quiz Writer & Tutor)

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