1833–1887 · Russia
Alexander Borodin (1833–1887) was a Russian composer who also worked as a chemist, writing music in whatever time was left over from the laboratory. A member of "The Five", he composed the Second, "Bogatyr" Symphony and the opera Prince Igor, which he never finished. He is worth knowing for the vivid national themes and Eastern colour in his music.
Alexander Borodin was born in Saint Petersburg on 12 November 1833 (31 October by the old calendar). He was the illegitimate son of Luka Gedianov, a prince from Imereti, and Avdotya Antonova, a Petersburg commoner. At birth the boy was registered as the son of the prince's serf, Porfiry Borodin, which is where the composer's surname came from. Until he was eight, Alexander was officially the serf of his own father, who freed him in 1840 and bought a large house in Petersburg for his son and mother. At her own request, he called his mother "auntie" his whole life, never "mother".
This background closed the door to a proper grammar school, so Borodin was educated at home: he covered the standard school curriculum, took lessons in English and Latin, spoke French and German fluently, and learned to play the flute, piano and cello. Around 1847 he wrote a concerto for flute and piano, which has not survived. To let her son finish school and go on to university, his mother arranged through officials of the Tver treasury office to have him registered as a third-guild merchant. From the age of ten Borodin became interested in chemistry, which in time became his main occupation.
In the summer of 1850 Borodin passed his final exams at the First Saint Petersburg Gymnasium, and that September, aged seventeen, he enrolled as an auditing student at the Medical-Surgical Academy. In 1853 he began studying chemistry under Nikolay Zinin, a scientist who would play a decisive role in his later career.
Even as a student Borodin kept writing romances, piano pieces and chamber ensembles, to his mentor's displeasure: Zinin believed music distracted his pupil from serious science and publicly reproached him for chasing two goals at once instead of preparing to succeed him.
After graduating in March 1856, Borodin became a resident physician at a military hospital, then an assistant at the department of general pathology, and from 1859 he was already lecturing students on chemistry. In 1857 he passed the examination for a doctorate in medicine, and in March 1858 in Saint Petersburg he defended a dissertation straddling chemistry and medicine. That same summer he studied the mineral waters at Soligalich in Kostroma province, and his 1859 publication on the results helped establish a health resort there that still operates today.
In the autumn of 1856, while on duty at the hospital, Borodin met Modest Mussorgsky, who was serving there as duty officer at the same time. The two young men quickly found common ground through music, and their acquaintance grew into a friendship that lasted for years. Around the same time, Mussorgsky's efforts at composing made a strong impression on Borodin: the unfamiliar music puzzled him with its novelty at first, but as he listened more he learned to enjoy it.
In 1857 Borodin travelled to Europe for the first time – Belgium, Germany, France – as secretary and interpreter to the court oculist. In October 1859, on Zinin's recommendation, he set off on a long research posting to prepare for an adjunct professorship in chemistry: for almost three years he worked mainly in laboratories in Germany (Heidelberg) and Italy (Pisa), also travelling to France and Switzerland.
In September 1860 Borodin, together with Zinin and Dmitri Mendeleev, attended the international congress of chemists at Karlsruhe, where the concepts of "atom" and "molecule" were clearly defined for the first time. In 1861, in Heidelberg, he worked out a method for obtaining brominated acids – a reaction chemists now call the Borodin–Hunsdiecker reaction.
In May 1861, in Heidelberg, Borodin met the pianist Ekaterina Protopopova, who had come to Germany for treatment. Protopopova had absolute pitch, loved the music of Chopin and Schumann, and held concerts at home. Getting to know her revived Borodin's interest in composing: these years produced his cello sonata on a theme of Bach, a string trio, a string sextet and a scherzo for piano four hands.
That autumn Protopopova's health worsened, and doctors advised her to move south to Italy; Borodin travelled with her. In Pisa he worked in the university laboratory, and in 1862 he became the first chemist in history to obtain an organofluorine compound – benzoyl fluoride – and found a way to make fluorides of carboxylic acids. He kept up his music there too, composing a piano quintet.
In September 1862 Borodin returned to Saint Petersburg. That same autumn he met Mily Balakirev and joined his musical circle, later known as The Five. In December 1862 Borodin became an adjunct professor at the Medical-Surgical Academy and began teaching a course in inorganic chemistry, and in March 1864 he took over the chemistry department as a full professor.
On 17 April 1863 Borodin married Ekaterina Protopopova. She tolerated the Petersburg climate poorly and would usually leave for her mother's in Moscow in autumn, coming back to her husband only in winter; during her frequent bouts of illness her husband became both her doctor and her nurse.
In the summer of 1865 Borodin and his wife stayed in southern Austria, near Graz, where he also finished his First Symphony. His views on music took shape at this time largely through contact with Balakirev, Stasov and other members of the circle: he gravitated toward the Russian national school and saw himself as continuing the line begun by Glinka.
Borodin did a good deal to open the way for women to gain higher education in Russia: he was among the founders of the Higher Courses for Women Physicians and taught chemistry there from 1872 to 1885, while from 1874 he also managed the funds of a society that supported students of medical and pedagogical courses. In 1868, on top of that, he became one of the founders of the Russian Chemical Society.
In 1870–1871 Borodin edited the journal Znanie. He spent much time working with students and used his own standing to try to shield them from the crackdown that followed the assassination of Emperor Alexander II.
In 1882–1883 Borodin attended the "Belyayev Fridays", musical evenings where new chamber music by Russian composers was performed. For a collective string quartet planned there, he wrote a scherzo in quintuple metre at the end of 1882, using for its slow middle section music from Prince Igor – the merchants' account of Igor's defeat. Today this piece, known as the "Russian Scherzo", is performed on its own.
In his final years Borodin complained of chest pains, and he died of a heart attack on the evening of 27 February 1887 (15 February by the old calendar) – in the middle of a costume party for Maslenitsa that he himself had organised in his official flat at the Academy. He was buried at the Tikhvin Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Saint Petersburg.
Borodin composed in whatever time was left over from the laboratory, so he finished few works. Under the influence of Balakirev, Stasov and the other members of The Five, he wrote in the spirit of the Russian national school, continuing the tradition of Glinka, while his music also shows a deep interest in the music of the peoples of the East. His major work, the opera Prince Igor, occupied him for eighteen years and was left unfinished: after his death it was completed and orchestrated by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov, and in this version it was first staged at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1890. Borodin avoided surface "folk" stylisation, aiming instead for a sense of genuine antiquity – audible both in Prince Igor and in his symphonies.
Among his orchestral works, two symphonies stand out: the First, first performed in 1869 under Balakirev, and the Second, which Stasov named the "Bogatyr" Symphony (the piano score finished in 1871, the full score in 1873). Both won recognition abroad during the composer's lifetime. The First Symphony was received especially warmly abroad, performed with success in Baden-Baden, Amsterdam, Budapest and Leipzig. Among his chamber works, the First and Second String Quartets (1879 and 1881) are considered his best; in vocal lyric writing there are romances on verses by Pushkin and Tolstoy, plus epic-toned ballads inspired by Russian legend, "The Sleeping Princess" and "The Song of the Dark Forest". Soviet composers, among them Prokofiev, Shaporin, Glière, Sviridov and Khachaturian, carried on Borodin's traditions.
The site holds separate parts of Prince Igor: piano-vocal scores of the acts and the prologue, sheet music for the overture (Igor Overture) and the Polovtsian Dances, plus piano pieces – the "Little Suite", a piano arrangement of the symphonic sketch In the Steppes of Central Asia (Dans les steppes de l'Asie), and a Scherzo in A-flat major. All the editions on the site are rated "intermediate and above", so it is worth starting with the short piano pieces before moving on to the piano-vocal score of Prince Igor. Together these thirteen editions give a rare chance to work through Borodin's best-known themes in the original, from the overture to the closing scenes of Prince Igor.