Night on Bald Mountain , refers to a series of compositions by Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881). Inspired by Russian literary works and legend, Mussorgsky composed a "musical picture", St. John's Eve on Bald Mountain on the theme of a witches' sabbath occurring on St. John's Eve, which he completed on that very night, June 23, in 1867. Together with Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov's Sadko (1867), it is one of the first tone poems by a Russian composer.