Biography of the Day: Aleksandr Borodin

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Alexander Borodin

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Aleksandr Borodin
Aleksandr Borodin
Born	12 November 1833 Saint Petersburg
Died	27 February 1887 (age 53) Saint Petersburg
Nationality	Russian
Fields	Composer and chemist
Doctoral advisor	Nikolay Zinin

Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin^[1] (12 November 1833 – 27 February 1887)^[2] was a RussianRomantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was a member of the group of composers called The Five (or "The Mighty Handful"), who were dedicated to producing a specifically Russian kind of art music.^[3][4][5] He is best known for his symphonies, his twostring quartets, and his opera Prince Igor. Music from Prince Igor and his string quartets was later adapted for the US musical Kismet.

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Life and profession

Borodin was born in Saint Petersburg, the illegitimate son of a Georgian noble, Luka Gedevanishvili (Georgian: ლუკა სიმონის ძე გედევანიშვილი) and a 24-year-old Russian woman, Evdokia Konstantinovna Antonova (Евдокия Константиновна Антонова). The nobleman had him registered as the son of one of his serfs, Porfiry Borodin.^[6] As a boy he received a good education, including piano lessons.^[7] He entered the Medico–Surgical Academy in 1850, which was later home to Ivan Pavlov, and pursued a career in chemistry. On graduation he spent a year as surgeon in a military hospital, followed by three years of advanced scientific study in western Europe.

In 1862 Borodin became a professor of chemistry at the Academy of Medicine, and eventually was able to establish medical courses for women (1872). He spent the remainder of his life lecturing and overseeing the education of others.

He began taking lessons in composition from Mily Balakirev in 1862. He married Ekaterina Protopopova, a pianist, in 1863.^[8] Music remained a secondary vocation for Borodin outside of his main career as a chemist and physician. He suffered poor health, having overcome choleraand several minor heart attacks. He died suddenly during a ball at the Academy, and was interred in Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, in Saint Petersburg.

Career as a chemist

In his profession Borodin gained great respect, being particularly noted for his work on aldehydes.^[9] Between 1859 and 1862 Borodin held a postdoctorate in Heidelberg. He worked in the laboratory of Emil Erlenmeyer working on benzene derivatives. He also spent time in Pisa, working on organic halogens. One experiment published in 1862 described the first nucleophilic displacement of chlorine by fluorine inbenzoyl chloride.^[10] A related reaction known to the West as the Hunsdiecker reaction published in 1939 by the Hunsdieckers was promoted by the Soviet Union as the Borodin reaction. In 1862 he returned to the Medico–Surgical Academy, where he worked on self-condensation of small aldehydes. He published papers in 1864 and 1869, and in this field he found himself competing with August Kekulé.

Borodin is co-credited with the discovery of the Aldol reaction, with Charles-Adolphe Wurtz. In 1872 he announced to the Russian Chemical Society the discovery of a new by-product in aldehyde reactions with alcohol-like properties, and he noted similarities with compounds already discussed in publications by Wurtz from the same year.

He published his last full article in 1875 on reactions of amides and his last publication concerned a method for the identification of urea in animal urine.

His son-in-law and successor was fellow chemist A. P. Dianin.

Musical avocation

[edit]Opera and orchestral works

Borodin met Mily Balakirev in 1862. While under Balakirev's tutelage in composition he began his Symphony No. 1 in E flat major; it was first performed in 1869, with Balakirev conducting. In that same year Borodin started on his Symphony No. 2 in B minor, which was not particularly successful at its premiere in 1877 under Eduard Nápravník, but with some minor re-orchestration received a successful performance in 1879 by the Free Music School under Rimsky-Korsakov's direction. In 1880 he composed the popular symphonic poem In the Steppes of Central Asia. Two years later he began composing a third symphony, but left it unfinished at his death; two movements of it were later completed and orchestrated by Glazunov.

In 1868 Borodin became distracted from initial work on the second symphony by preoccupation with the opera Prince Igor, which is seen by some to be his most significant work and one of the most important historical Russian operas. It contains the Polovtsian Dances, often performed as a stand-alone concert work forming what is probably Borodin's best known composition. Borodin left the opera (and a few other works) incomplete at his death. Prince Igor was completed posthumously by Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov. It is set in the 12th century, when the barbarous Polovtsians invaded southern Russia. The story tells of the capture of Prince Igor and son Vladimir of Russia by Polovtsian leader Khan Konchak, who entertains his prisoners lavishly and calls on his slaves to perform the famous Polovtsian dances, which provide a thrilling climax to the second act.

Chamber music

No other member of the Balakirev circle identified himself so openly with absolute music as did Borodin in his two string quartets. Himself a cellist, he was an enthusiastic chamber music player, an interest that deepened during his chemical studies in Heidelberg between 1859 and 1861. This early period yielded, among other chamber works, a string sextet and a piano quintet. In thematic structure and instrumental texture he based his pieces on those of Felix Mendelssohn.^[11]

In 1875 Borodin started his First String Quartet, much to the displeasure of Mussorgsky and Vladimir Stasov. That Borodin did so in the company of The Five, who were hostile to chamber music, speaks to his independence. From the First Quartet on, he displayed mastery in the form. His Second Quartet, in which his strong lyricism is represented in the popular "Nocturne", followed in 1881. The First Quartet is richer in changes of mood. The Second Quartet has a more uniform atmosphere and expression.^[11]

Musical legacy

The bust of Borodin at his tomb inTikhvin Cemetery. (The visible musical notation on the tile monument in the background shows themes from (1) "Gliding Dance of the Maidens" fromPolovtsian Dances; (2) "Song of the Dark Forest"; and (3) the "Scherzo" theme from Symphony No. 3.)

Main article: List of compositions by Alexander Borodin

Borodin's fame outside the Russian Empire was made possible during his lifetime by Franz Liszt, who arranged a performance of the Symphony No. 1 in Germany in 1880, and by the Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau in Belgium and France. His music is noted for its strong lyricism and rich harmonies. Along with some influences from Western composers, as a member of The Five his music exudes also an undeniably Russian flavor. His passionate music and unusual harmonies proved to have a lasting influence on the younger French composers Debussy and Ravel (in homage, the latter composed in 1913 a piano piece entitled "À la manière de Borodine").

The evocative characteristics of Borodin's music made possible the adaptation of his compositions in the 1953 musical Kismet, by Robert Wright and George Forrest, perhaps most notably in the song, "Stranger in Paradise". In 1954, Borodin was posthumously awarded a Tony Award for this show.

Borodin's music is full of romantic charm and enticing melody, and much of it also rings with the pageantry and landscape of old Russia; of onion-domed churches, richly decorated icons, and the vastness of the land. (Betty Fry)

Subsequent references

• The Borodin Quartet was named in his honour.
• The chemist Alexander Shulgin uses the name "Alexander Borodin" as a fictional persona in the books PiHKAL and TiHKAL.
• In his book Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame (1974) Charles Bukowski wrote a poem about the life of Borodin entitled "the life of borodin".

References

1. ^ Russian: Алекса́ндр Порфи́рьевич Бороди́н, tr. Aleksandr Porfir'evič Borodin.
2. ^ Old Style dates 31 October 1833 – 15 February 1887.
3. ^ Abraham, Gerald. Borodin: the Composer and his Music. London, 1927
4. ^ Dianin, Sergei Aleksandrovich. Borodin. London, New York, Oxford University Press, 1963
5. ^ Oldani, Robert, William. "Borodin, Aleksandr Porfir′yevich," Grove Music Online (Accessed 27 January 2006, subscription required)
6. ^ 8Notes website
7. ^ By his teens Borodin could speak German, French, Italian and English, and could play the piano, flute and cello (Betty Fry,Tutor.com)
8. ^ Habets, Alfred (2005). Borodin and Liszt: I. Life and works of a Russian Composer. II. Liszt, as sketched in the letters of Borodin. Adamant Media Corporation. ISBN 978-1-4212-5305-3.
9. ^ Michael D. Gordin (1996). "Facing the Music: How Original Was Borodin's Chemistry?" (PDF). Journal of Chemical Education83 (4): 561–566. doi:10.1021/ed083p561.
10. ^ E. J. Behrman (2006). "Borodin?" (PDF). Journal of Chemical Education 83 (8): 1138. doi:10.1021/ed083p1138.1.
11. ^ ^a b Maes, 72

External links

• Free scores by Alexander Borodin in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Famous "In the Steppes of Central Asia", Alexander Borodin in Film ... on YouTube
• List of compositions (German)
• Free scores by Borodin at the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores by Alexander Borodin in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Borodin's tomb

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Alexander Borodin

• Maes, Francis, tr. Pomerans, Arnold J. and Erica Pomerans, A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002). ISBN 0-520-21815-9.
• George Sarton (1939). "Borodin (1833–87)". Osiris 7: 224–260. doi:10.1086/368505. JSTOR 301543.
• A. J. B. Hutchings (1936). "A Study of Borodin: I. The Man". The Musical Times 77 (1124): 881–883. doi:10.2307/920565.JSTOR 920565.
• George B. Kauffman, Kathryn Bumpass (1988). "An Apparent Conflict between Art and Science: The Case of Aleksandr Porfir'evich Borodin (1833–1887)". Leonardo 21 (4): 429–436. doi:10.2307/1578707. JSTOR 1578707.
• J. Podlech (2010). ""Try and Fall Sick …"—The Composer, Chemist, and Surgeon Aleksandr Borodin". Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 49 (37): 6490–95. doi:10.1002/anie.201002023. PMID 20715236.