Musicology Annotation << Back Illustrated music: «Night on Bald Mountain» by Alexandre Alexe&#239;eff Tatiana Sapegina The article is devoted to the first animated film by French director Alexandre Alexeïeff «Night on Bald Mountain» (1933), made with the use of the pinscreen technology he invented. In this film Alexeïeff attempted to create a moving illustration of Mussorgsky's piece. «Night on Bald Mountain» extended his career of an illustrator, it was no accident that Alexeïeff defined a genre of the movie as “animated engraving”. The author focuses on Alexeïeff’s applying aesthetic principles and methods of work to create illustrations to a new artistic field, and on the subject and musical composition of the Mussorgsky’s work being related to their visual interpretation. The article investigates Alexeïeff’s creative process in both areas, identifies parallels between the imagery of the film and graphic works of the late 1920s, finds the elements of the score which he regarded as significant, analysing fragments of schemes of music Alexeïeff created to simplify the timing of film, compares sound and video sequences to explore relationships between the structure and logic of the movie and the musical development. Just as in book decorating Alexeïeff avoids literal following of the text and seeks to identify and convey its meaning, he is looking for the underlying message of the Mussorgsky’s music in his animated film. Although he appeals to stories of Gogol and Pushkin in some scenes, the film is made as the flow of images connected with Alexeïeff’s personal memories and associations. The development in “Night on Bald Mountain” is under its own rhythm and system of visual refrains, so the video serves as “counterpoint” to the sound. Keywords: Alexeïeff, Mussorgsky, Night on Bald Mountain, illustration, pinscreen, audiovisual counterpoint. Contacts: E-mail: tanya.sapegina@gmail.com Pp. 66-74.