He remains possibly the most loved of the famous "Russian Five" composers, and his melodies are so unforgettable that they were adapted into the Broadway musical, Kismet.
But Alexander Borodin was only a part-time composer, because he was equally brilliant in the field of chemistry — and that over-abundance of talent might just have done him in in the end, as Martin Buzacott explains.
A society scandal
A promising young chemist
As a teenager, Borodin was brilliant at whatever he turned his hand to. He played the cello, but he was perhaps even more adept at science, in which he loved experimenting, including by making fireworks. In the end, science won out over music, and in 1850 he enrolled at the Medico-Surgical Academy in St Petersburg, and during his 20s began what would become a stellar career in chemical research, notable in particular for his work on organic synthesis and his encouragement of female chemists and medical practitioners.
But his interest in music remained, inspired first by his close friendship with a revolutionary, eccentric, and hard-living young composer named Modest Mussorgsky, and then by falling in love with a 29-year-old piano virtuoso named Ekaterina Protopopova — his future wife. But the decisive moment in Borodin’s musical career came in 1862 when he met Mily Balakirev, the founding father of modern Russian music.
Discovering a penchant for the exotic
Borodin was 29 when he first met Balakirev, who had just returned from a folksong-collecting expedition into the Caucasus. His tales of exotic cultures to the east, and the music emanating from them, fired Borodin’s musical imagination. Virtually untrained as a composer, but with Balakirev as a mentor, Borodin set out to compose a symphony in the Nationalist style, not imitating the Austro-German traditions but built on the vibrant music and culture of the Russian Empire. By this stage, Borodin was a leading Professor and researcher at the Medico-Surgical Academy, so it took him five years to complete the symphony. But when it emerged, it proved to be a stunning work, filled with unforgettable melodies and intense, drama-charged orchestral writing. And therein lay the essence of the style that would eventually turn Borodin into one of the most-loved composers in history.
The masterworks emerge, or maybe not...
Death by burnout
After Ekaterina became terminally ill, Borodin took on the role of carer, while continuing to pursue his academic career, where he was respected and loved not just for his ground-breaking research, but also for his encouragement and mentoring of colleagues. But Ekaterina struggled to sleep and they now had a young adopted daughter who Borodin also had to care for. Soon, there just weren’t enough hours in the day. Borodin wrote that he was trying to "be a Glinka (ie. a composer), a Stupishin (a civil servant), scientist, commissioner, artist, government official, philanthropist, father of other people’s children, and doctor," but in the end, he said, became just an invalid himself. He was exhausted, but pressed on, and on 27 February 1887 he attended a party where apparently he was in fine form, dancing and joking with his fellow-guests. But that very night, just after midnight, he was struck down with a fatal heart attack and didn’t live to see the morning. He was 53.