Night on Bald Mountain it. To salvage what he considered worthy material, Mussorgsky attempted to insert his "Bald Mountain" music, recast for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra, into two subsequent projects—the collaborative opera-ballet "Mlada" (1872), and the opera "The Fair at Sorochyntsi" (1880). However, "Night on Bald Mountain" was never performed in any form during Mussorgsky's lifetime. In 1886, five years after Mussorgsky's death, Rimsky-Korsakov published an arrangement of the work, described as a "fantasy for orchestra." Some musical scholars consider this version to be an original composition of Rimsky-Korsakov, albeit one based on Mussorgsky's last version of the music, for "The Fair at
Night on Bald Mountain John's Eve on Bald Mountain", usually shortened to "Night on Bald Mountain". However, due to several ambiguities, the composition is also known by a number of alternate titles in English. The Russian word "ночь" ("noch′") is literally "night" in English, but idiomatically this would refer to the night following St. John's Day, variously observed between 21 June (the summer solstice) and 25 June. The night before St. John's Day is usually referred to as "St. John's Eve" in English; Russian does not make this distinction. "Bald Mountain" is the most familiar translation of "лысой горе" ("lysoy gore") in English, and