Posted by Michael Heavener on November 24, 19101 at 14:20:36:

In Reply to: bald vs bare mountain posted by Woody Harris on November 20, 19101 at 21:59:55:

It's kind of a mix-up between Maurice Ravel, Deems Taylor, and Walt Disney.

The name of the mountain, located between St. Petersburg and Moscow, has been translated as Bare Mountain (or more accurately, Treeless Mountain).

When Disney was concocting Fantasia, he hired New York News critic Deems Taylor as his musical advisor (Taylor, in my opinion, is one of the most inept psuedo-practitioners of the critical arts), and Taylor, in turn, based all his research on a single interview with Maurice Ravel.

Ravel, of course, did the original orchestral score of the Rimsky-Korsakov version of Mussourgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, both of which deviated wildly from the composer's original charts. Ravel, a Frenchman, was somewhat coy (the French have a peculiarly dry sense of humor) and kept referring to the shorter piece as Nights on the Bald Mountain. Taylor told Disney to call the piece Night on Bald Mountain and it's been known that way ever since.

This is doented in Time critic Richard Schickel's book, The Disney Version, and in Taylor's self-important book of his own conversations and interviews.

Thanks, and peace,
Michael Heavener
heavener@heavenr.com
http://www.heavenr.com

• I'd rather listen to Music

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