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“Night on Bald Mountain” meets “Ave Maria”

“Night on Bald Mountain” meets “Ave Maria”

Last updated on: October 28, 2025 at 9:51 pm by Dan Peterson

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“Night on Bald Mountain” meets “Ave Maria” 2025-10-28T21:51:33-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Three men in a river, on the set of the Interpreter Foundation’s 2021 “Witnesses” film project early in the filming process at Genesee Country Village, in New York: From left to right, Russell Richins (producer), James Jordan (assistant director), and Mark Goodman (director)
(Still photograph courtesy of gaffer Rhett Fernsten)

I spent several hours today filming a discussion for eventual use in the Interpreter Foundation’s Becoming Brigham series, which we will launch in mid-January of next year. The crew were our core filming team of Mark Goodman, James Jordan, and Russ Richins. With me, the discussants were Steve Densley, Matt Roper, Paul Fields, and Larry Bassist. Our conversation was based upon an exceptionally important article that they’ve written for Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship and that will be published on Friday, 7 November. The filming was done in a beautiful private home that was generously made available to us for the purpose.

The baptistry of the Finland Helsinki Temple (Photo by Sandy Damaris)

This went up new today on the never-changing website of the Interpreter Foundation: Interpreter Foundation Come, Follow Me Podcast November 3 – 9: “A Voice of Gladness for the Living and the Dead”: Doctrine & Covenants 125 – 128

For the 7 October 2025 Come, Follow Me segment of the Interpreter Foundation Podcast, Terry Hutchinson, Kevin Christensen, and Mark Johnson discussed the Come, Follow Me Doctrine & Covenants lesson for November 3 – 9 covering D&C 125 – 128. The Discussion segment of the 7 October 2025 podcast can be accessed at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreter-podcast-october-7-2025.

And so did this: Come, Follow Me — D&C Study and Teaching Helps (2025) Doctrine and Covenants 125–128: November 3 – 9: “A Voice of Gladness for the Living and the Dead”

Once again, Jonn Claybaugh provides a concise set of helpful notes for students and teachers of the Church’s Come, Follow Me curriculum.

The new official portrait of President Dallin H. Oaks (October 2025, LDS Media Library)

I think that you’ll find this not-quite-twenty-minute video very interesting. I certainly did. More importantly, I think that it will help you to begin to appreciate the remarkable man who is the new president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: “VIDEO: The Miraculous Preparation of Dallin H. Oaks”

The famous northern rose window of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. (Wikimedia Commons public domain)

It’s been a long day and I’m running out of steam, so I think that I’ll share a passage that I marked from my recent reading of Imagining and Reimagining the Restoration, which was written by Robert A. Rees:

I used to think that in order to get to the celestial kingdom I had to keep all the commandments. I now believe that I need to live as perfectly as possible one commandment—the commandment to love. Further, I believe that those who enter that kingdom will do so because, having learned to love purely, they alone will be comfortable in the presence of the pure love of God. Others who have loved less completely and less purely will seek lower kingdoms.

I believe that the celestial kingdom is reserved for those who have learned to love themselves, others, and God; the terrestrial kingdom for those who have learned to love themselves and others; and the telestial kingdom for those who chose to love only themselves. The love of the first will be as bright and as warm as the sun, while the love of the second and third will be comparable, respectively, to the light and warmth of the moon and stars. Outer darkness is reserved for those who, in spite of all the opportunities given them in mortality, are unable to give or receive love of any kind. As Father Zosima says in The Brothers Karamazov, “Fathers and teachers, I ponder ‘What is hell?’ I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.” (199)

The demonic entity Chernabog (“black god” in Proto-Slavic), shown summoning up the dead from atop Bald Mountain, in Disney’s Fantasia (fair use, I think and hope)

Last night, we introduced a Third-Generation Unit — whose name I’ve suppressed here in order to make it more difficult for my obsessive critics to target my grandchild — to a segment of Walt Disney’s 1940 animated musical film Fantasia., which had an enormous impact on me when I saw it (for the very first time) during its theatrical re-release at the end of 1969. This was at the same period when my wonderful German teacher at San Gabriel High School, Lenore Smith. had been introducing our class to the great German and Austrian composers, and Fantasia powerfully reinforced my new interest in classical music.

The portion of Fantasia that we introduced to the TGU was the segment that melds Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain with Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria. We thought it appropriate for the approaching Halloween holiday. (We’ve also recently introduced the TGU to such classics as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein [1948] and to Disney’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow [1949), Lonesome Ghosts [1937], and The Skeleton Dance [1929].)

As I watched it, it occurred to me that this particular segment of Fantasia is even more fitting for the season of Halloween and Christmas than I had realized. In Night on Bald Mountain, the scene begins with the reign of darkness, night, death, and demonic power. But then comes the sunrise, light, and the retreat of evil, which culminates in the Annunciation to Mary of the advent of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer. Perfect. I don’t know that Walt Disney and his people intended that, but it is, indeed, perfect.

Ave Maria, gratia plena.
Dominus tecum.

Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
Et benedictus
Et benedictus fructus ventris,
Ventris tui, Jesus.

Sancta Maria,
Ora pro nobis,
Nobis peccatoribus,
Nunc et in hora
Mortis nostrae.

Amen.

For a rendition of Schubert’s Ave Maria by the late Luciano Pavarotti (with Zubin Mehta in Los Angeles), see this. And here is an English translation of the text:

Hail Mary,
full of grace,
the Lord is with thee;
blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,
Jesus.
Holy Mary,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

Please note that, as usual, this blog entry is a completely politics-free zone.

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