Alexander Borodin

For more information on Aleksandr Porfiryevich Borodin, visit Britannica.com.

(b St Petersburg, 12 Nov 1833; d there, 27 Feb 1887). Russian composer. As a youth he developed parallel interests in music and chemistry, teaching himself the cello and qualifying in medicine (1856); throughout his life music was subordinated to his research and his activities as a lecturer (from 1862) at the Medico-Surgical Academy in St Petersburg. His predilection for the music of Mendelssohn and Schumann, together with his acquaintance with Musorgsky, Cui, Rimsky-Korsakov, Liszt and above all Balakirev gave shape to his compositional efforts. It was mainly through Balakirev's influence that he turned towards Russian nationalism, using Russian folksong in his music; he was one of ‘The Five’, the group eager to create a distinctive nationalist school.

Borodin's earliest completed works include the First Symphony in E♭ (1867), showing a freshness and assurance that brought immediate acclaim, and no.2 in B minor (1876) which, though longer in the making, is one of the boldest and most colourful symphonies of the century, in the Russian context a mature, symphonic counterpart to Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila. The piece contributing most to his early fame, however, especially in western Europe, was the short orchestral ‘musical picture’ On the Steppes of Central Asia (1880; dedicated to Liszt). Among the important chamber pieces, including those works which give the lie most clearly to charges of inspired dilettantism still sometimes brought against him, are the early Piano Quintet in C minor (1862) - already showing the supple lyricism, smooth texture, neat design and heartfelt elegiac quality of his most characteristic music - and the two string quartets, the second famous for its beautiful Nocturne, with their craftsmanship and latent muscularity. His most substantial achievement was undoubtedly the opera Prince Igor (written over the period 1869-87; completed and partly orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov). Despite its protracted creation and weak, disjointed libretto (Borodin's own), it contains abundant musical richness in its individual arias, in its powerfully Russian atmosphere and its fine choral scenes crowned by the barbaric splendour of the Polovtsian Dances.

works:
Dramatic music

• The Bogatïrs, opera-farce (1867)
• Prince Igor, opera, inc. (1887)
• one act of Mlada, opera-ballet (1872)

Orchestral music

• Sym. no.1, E♭ (1867)
• Sym. no.2, b (1876) Sym. no.3, a, inc. (1887)
• In the Steppes of Central Asia, musical picture (1880)

Chamber and piano music

• 2 str qts (1879, 1881)
• Pf Qnt c(1862)
• c 10 other chamber works
• scherzos etc for pf solo and duet

Vocal music

• c 16 songs

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The Russian composer Aleksandr Porfirevich Borodin (1833-1887) was also a physician and research chemist. He epitomized the group of composers known as the "Mighty Five" and used folk music in conscious pursuit of a "national style."

Aleksandr Borodin was born in St. Petersburg. The name Borodin was that of a retainer to Prince Gedeanov; the prince acknowledged paternity and provided the mother and the boy with a name. Borodin was raised with many of the privileges of the nobility, and his education was broad in the tradition of the European gentleman. This included musical training and preparation for a profession: medicine.

While still a young medical intern, Borodin gained entry to the Mighty Five, partly on the strength of his keyboard ability - a defining factor of the 19th-century romantic Russian composer. His training had been that of the gifted dilettante; he now came under the influence of the taskmaster of the group, Mili Balakirev, and subsequently under the influence of the other members of the Mighty Five: Modest Mussorgsky, César Cui, and Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Of them, Borodin alone stuck by his original and primary profession, although he gave up actual medical practice ("distasteful") for research.

Although his works are relatively few, Borodin ranks a close second to Mussorgsky as a creative artist among the Mighty Five. His gift is marked neither by the uncertainty nor the verbosity of some of his colleagues and most of his musical heirs. Moreover, his confidence is not marred by the self-righteous certainty that led the next generation of Russian composers into relatively insignificant utterance.

Borodin's Second Symphony (the Bogatyr or Heroic) and his opera Prince Igor (finished posthumously by Rimsky-Korsakov and Aleksandr Glazunov) are his principal works of large proportions. In both he uses a developed folk style effectively, and in the opera he makes a major contribution to the subgenre of "Russian music about the East." Borodin's happy gift for beguiling melody is attested to by the adaptation of his Prince Igor music for the American musical Kismet. Other than the symphony and the opera, his most-played works are, perhaps, the two String Quartets, some of whose themes are also heard in Kismet. A few other chamber works and some 18 art songs nearly round out Borodin's complete list of works.

Some elements of Borodin's personal life and his creative procedures remain obscure. A significant store of Borodiniana has been, since the composer's death, in the hands of the Dianin family. Although the family has tried to present the composer to the world (the first Dianin was Borodin's laboratory assistant), they are too closely involved and Soviet puritanism is far too strong to allow for frankness about personal things; and the Dianins, none of them professional musicians, misjudge what is significant about the creative procedure. Sergei Dianin, a mathematician, in his Borodin biography (1963) supposed the composer to have combined musical elements as a chemist combines chemicals.

Borodin did not teach. He died in 1887, and his legacy was preserved by his friends and reappears in some of the work of Sergei Prokofiev. Borodin's few works, like those of Mussorgsky, are disproportionately important.

Further Reading

The basic biography of Borodin is Sergei Dianin, Borodin (trans. 1963). An earlier work is Gerald E. H. Abraham, Borodin: The Composer and His Music (1927). Books with substantial sections on Borodin include Abraham's Studies in Russian Music (1936); M. D. Calvocoressi and Gerald Abraham, Masters of Russian Music (1936); Donald Brook, Six Great Russian Composers (1946); Victor I. Seroff, The Mighty Five: The Cradle of Russian National Music (1948); and Mikhail O. Zetlin, The Five: The Evolution of the Russian School of Music, edited and translated by George Panin (1959).

Additional Sources

Dianin, Sergei Aleksandrovich, Borodin, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980.

Aleksandr Porfirevich Borodin: a chemist's biography, Berlin; New York: Springer-Verlag, 1988.

Habets, Alfred, Borodin and Liszt, New York: AMS Press, 1977.

Borodin, Alexander (b St Petersburg, 12 Nov. 1833, d St Petersburg, 27 Feb. 1887). Russian composer. Although he wrote no ballet music, the Polovtsian Dances from his opera Prince Igor was one of the most popular works in the repertoire of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, choreographed by Fokine.

• Period: Romantic (1820-1869)
• Country: Russia
• Born: November 12, 1833 in St. Petersburg, Russia
• Died: February 27, 1887 in St. Petersburg, Russia
• Genres: Chamber Music, Keyboard Music, Miscellaneous Music, Opera, Orchestral Music, Symphony, Vocal Music

Biography

Though far from prolific as a composer -- by day he was a scientist noted for his research on aldehydes -- Alexander Borodin nevertheless earned a secure place in the history of Russian music. As a creative spirit, Borodin was the most accomplished of the Russian nationalists composers. He had a particular gift for the distinctive stripe of exoticism so evident in his most frequently performed work, the Polovtsian Dances from the opera Prince Igor.

The illegitimate son of a Georgian prince and a doctor's wife, Borodin enjoyed a comfortable upbringing. As a child he learned to play several instruments and tried his hand at composing, but other aptitudes directed his formal education. He studied chemistry at St. Petersburg's Medico-Surgical Academy, obtaining his doctorate in 1858 and pursuing further studies in Europe until 1862. Upon his return to Russia, he became a professor at his alma mater; but even as an academic career apparently loomed before him, he maintained a devotion to music.

Under the influence of Mily Balakirev, whom he met in 1862, Borodin became interested in applying elements of Russian folk music to works for the concert hall and stage. He joined a circle of like-minded composers -- Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, and Cui -- famously dubbed "The Five" or "The Mighty Handful." The influence of Balakirev in particular is at once in evident in the Symphony No. 1 in E flat major (1867). Borodin began the much craggier Symphony No. 2 in B minor in 1869, the same year he commenced labor on his most important work, the opulent four-act opera Prince Igor. While it took Borodin more than five years to complete the symphony, work on Prince Igor dragged on for decades. Borodin, who had in the meantime completed a number of other works, left the opera unfinished at the time of his death. It was completed posthumously by Rimsky-Korsakov, a skillful craftsman and a particularly apt match for Borodin's colorful musical character, and Alexander Glazunov. Glazunov also completed the Symphony No. 3 in A minor, which the composer had been working on until the time of his death.

Aside from teaching chemistry and conducting research, Borodin helped found a series of medical courses for women in 1872. Such activities, as well as the poor health that plagued him in the 1880s, drained the energy that he might have devoted to composition. Still, as a part-time composer, Borodin jeft a significant oeuvre: more than a dozen worthy songs, miscellaneous piano pieces, two string quartets (the second of which contains a ravishing Nocturne often performed in an arrangement for string orchestra), and the popular tone poem In the Steppes of Central Asia (1880). He died while attending a ball in St. Petersburg on February 27, 1887. ~ James Reel, All Music Guide

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