Alexander Borodin

The usual Russian-to-English lexicographical nightmare ensues! The New Groves lists this composer as Borodin, Alexander, Porfir'yevich, in full and with no indication of optionality for the patronymic. No-one in their right mind, however, ever calls him anything other than 'Alexander Borodin', so on this occasion I'm going to declare the New Groves is 'wrong' and the patronymic is thus dispensed with when cataloguing his works.

Borodin was born in St. Petersburg in 1833, the illegitimate son of a 62 year-old Georgian nobleman and a 24 year-old woman who went on to marry a retired army doctor. The nobleman had the boy registered as the son of one of his serfs, Porfiry Borodin -which explains both the composer's surname and (obviously!) the patronymic. That officially made the boy a serf of the nobleman -but he was granted emancipation by the nobleman when he turned 7, and was well-provided for in the meantime, with a large house and plenty of money for both him and his mother. Private tutors ensured Borodin received an excellent education: he was fluent in French, German and English and was playing music at 8 and composing it by age 9. In 1850 (aged 17) he enrolled in the St. Petersburg Medico-Surgical academy, where he began to study (amongst other things) chemistry. Chemistry became a passion and in 1858, he published his first chemistry paper (“On the action of Ethyl-iodide on Hydrobenzamide and Amarine”!) That same year, he received his doctorate for his dissertation on the Analogy of Arsenical with Phosphoric Acid. So, now you know :)

In the late 1850s and early 1860s, Borodin made trips to Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and France: it was at this time that he first made acquaintance with the music of Richard Wagner (Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and the Flying Dutchman), which knocked him sideways. In 1864, he was appointed professor of chemistry at the Medico-Surgical academy. He was to spend the rest of his life in that position, continuing his studies in fundamental chemistry throughout -and thus composing as something of a hobby on the side.

It was not untill 1862 that Borodin began to compose his first symphony -and it wasn't fully finished until 1869! Its eventual success persuaded him to start writing a second -and an opera, Prince Igor based on the 12th century epic poem “The Tale of Igor's Campaign” and tells the story of a Russian prince captured by the Polovtsian people (who dance a lot!). The writing of the opera was an off-and-on-again affair, and it wasn't finished at the time of his sudden death in 1887 (it had to be polished to completion by Rimsky-Korsakov and wasn't performed until 1890). A third symphony was begun, but again wasn't completed before his death and had to be finished by Glazunov: you can tell the chemistry took precedence over the music all this time!

His musical output is, as you can tell, somewhat limited: there are the three symphonies, two string quartets along with some string trios, quintets and sextets, some piano works and a handful of songs. And then there's Prince Igor, his single most substantial work. For someone who basically amounts to a one-hit wonder, it's surprising (to me, at least) that he rates eight pages of editorial in the New Groves, but he does! As Sir Henry Hadow put it in 1906, “No musician has ever claimed immortality with so slender an offering”.