Alexander Borodin
(1833–1887)
Who Was
Alexander Borodin?
A Brief Introduction
Alexander Borodin is chiefly remembered in musical circles and the world at large as one of the group of Russian nationalist composers known as the Mighty Handful (Moguchaya kuchka, sometimes also known as “The Five”), but he was also at least as notable in his own day in Russia as a research chemist, whose work on organic synthesis is still occasionally cited. His music is particularly rich in melody, and has accordingly been plundered by the modern popular market. But his unfinished opera Prince Igor had the makings of a genuine dramatic masterpiece, if he had only had time to compose it all and in the right order.
Early Years: St. Petersburg and Education
Borodin was born in St. Petersburg, the illegitimate son of Georgian Prince Luka Gedianov and hence, as usual in such cases, was registered as the son of one of Gedianov’s serfs—a certain Porfiry Borodin. He was nevertheless brought up in an aristocratic environment, educated at home, given piano lessons, and generally encouraged in civilized pursuits, which in his early teens included setting up a miniature laboratory in his bedroom and teaching himself the cello. His childhood enthusiasm for chemistry led him to study at the city’s Medical-Surgical Academy, and eventually to a Professorship of Chemistry at the Academy of Physicians. He never held a musical post of any kind.
All the same, music dominated his teenage years. With a friend he would play piano duet arrangements of the symphonies of Haydn, Beethoven and even Felix Mendelssohn. They played chamber music (Borodin on cello, his friend on violin) and went to concerts, and Borodin began to compose: piano pieces, a string trio (1847, now lost), later a string quintet (1853–4, but incomplete) and a second string trio (1854–5). At the Academy his musical enthusiasm began to be seen as a distraction from his studies, especially as he was regarded as a scientist of serious potential. “You can’t hunt two hares at the same time,” his professor told him. They were to prove prophetic words.
At the Academy his musical enthusiasm began to be seen as a distraction from his studies, especially as he was regarded as a scientist of serious potential. “You can’t hunt two hares at the same time,” his professor told him. They were to prove prophetic words.
In 1859, after successfully defending his doctoral dissertation, he went abroad for further study. He was away for three years, in Heidelberg, Paris and Italy, and, as before, music dominated his spare time. He heard Wagner operas in Mannheim, Bellini operas in Pisa. In Heidelberg he heard and played chamber music and composed a cello sonata, a piano trio and a string sextet—music of an essentially traditional cut but already showing a talent for melody and the rhythmic energy that would remain characteristic. But also characteristic was the fact that not one of these works was completed, whether because of the calls of science or a streak of mental laziness. In Heidelberg he met his future wife, Yekaterina Protopopova—a Russian pianist in Germany for treatment of tuberculosis—and they married in April 1863, six months after their return to St. Petersburg.
Middle Period: The Mighty Handful
Up to the age of 30, Borodin’s musical experience had centered on the Western Classical repertoire. There was no particularly noticeable Russian consciousness in his musical thinking. An attractive piano quintet, which he did complete (in Viareggio, just before his return to Russia), has a certain ethnic flavor in its thematic material, but the treatment is orthodox if slightly short-winded. Soon after his return he met a young pianist-composer called Mily Balakirev, was invited to one of Balakirev’s musical soirées, and there met other members of his circle, including the composer César Cui, and the art historian Vladimir Stasov. He also re-met the composer Modest Mussorgsky, a former guard’s officer whom he had encountered briefly back in 1856.
These men were the embryonic core of a group that Stasov, their intellectual guru, later dubbed the Mighty Handful—by then also including a young ex-naval midshipman by the name of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. They were gifted amateurs on a mission to rescue Russian music from its domination by the Germanic mainstream. They sought, in theory at least, an authentically Russian style by using Russian materials (language, folksong, etc.) and Russian subject matter (very broadly defined), and by making light of the supposed rules of the Conservatoire, which, in any case, being largely untrained, they found hard to apply with any consistency.
[The Mighty Handful] sought, in theory at least, an authentically Russian style by using Russian materials (language, folksong, etc.) and Russian subject matter (very broadly defined), and by making light of the supposed rules of the Conservatoire, which, in any case, being largely untrained, they found hard to apply with any consistency.
They did nevertheless compose the occasional symphony—chamber music, hardly at all. Soon after meeting Balakirev, Borodin embarked on a Symphony in E-flat major (1862–1867), which, characteristically, would take him more than four years to complete. The problem was built in: apart from Balakirev, the group all had day jobs, and with their shortage of polished technique, finishing the large works they craved could be hard. It didn’t always help that they met regularly, criticized each other’s work in progress, and volunteered not always suitable subject matter to each other. Borodin, now a full-time professor at the Academy of Physicians, had little spare time and a tubercular, asthmatic wife with chronic insomnia. For him the group mentality could be a hindrance. For instance, in 1872, Stasov came up with the idea for a joint project, an opera-ballet called Mlada, based on an old Baltic-Slav fairy-tale. Borodin, allocated the final act, was excited by it and composed his part quickly. Unfortunately, of the others only Cui completed his contribution, so the project fell through, and Borodin’s efforts were wasted.
Meanwhile he composed a number of songs, including minor masterpieces such as “The Sea Princess” and “Song of the Dark Forest” (both 1868), and started
a second symphony, in B minor (1869). But at more or less the same time, he began an opera on another topic suggested by Stasov: the 12th-century Russian epic The Lay of the Host of Igor, possibly suggested by Borodin’s own description of his new symphony as a bardic account of medieval knights in battle. To compose the symphony—perhaps his finest completed work—took him all of six years, but Prince Igor, when Borodin died 18 years later, was to remain unfinished, a mass of completed movements, drafts, and fragmentary sketches with no clear scenario or fixed sequence. As assembled, completed, and in some cases orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov and his pupil Alexander Glazunov, it contains some of the most brilliant music of any 19th-century opera; but dramatically coherent, alas, it is not.
Late Period: The String Quartets
After the collapse of the Mlada project, Borodin returned to the Second Symphony, then in 1874, before it was quite finished, began a string quartet while still working sporadically on Prince Igor (including the well-known Polovtsian Dances). Of all the group, he was best equipped to write chamber music—the only string player and the only one with any experience in the field. Nonetheless, it took him five years to complete the A major String Quartet: admittedly a substantial piece, partly inspired by Beethoven, and containing a good deal of fugal writing. Soon afterwards, in 1881, he wrote a second string quartet, in D major, of a lighter and more lyrical character, and with a beautiful Nocturne slow movement (once famous for its inclusion in the musical Kismet). In between the quartets he had composed a short symphonic poem, In Central Asia (1880), for a gala concert celebrating the silver jubilee of Tsar Alexander II. Afterwards he tinkered with a third symphony, in A minor (1886–87), and continued the unavailing struggle with Prince Igor.
Borodin: Quartet No. 2 in D major for Strings
The struggle came to an abrupt end at a fancy dress ball he had organized at the Academy in February 1887. Dressed as a Russian peasant, in baggy trousers, high boots, and a red woolen shirt, he suddenly crashed to the ground, striking his head on the corner of the stove. Death was instantaneous. He had suffered a ruptured aorta.
Watching and Listening
Borodin’s chamber music is entirely early and late. The string quartets are reasonably well-known: well-written and often beautiful works. But the early works, even the unfinished ones, have also been recorded and are well worth exploring. The Piano Quintet, which he did complete, is particularly fine and has the added interest of showing his personal style just before his encounter with Balakirev.
