Plenty of people have composed music as a hobby, but none more successfully than Alexander Borodin, a chemist by profession. As a hobbyist, he did not produce a lot of music, but his works include symphonies, chamber music, and an opera—some of the loveliest music in the repertoire. The opera, Prince Igor, includes the ever-popular “Polovtsian Dances,” which formed the tune of the Broadway hit “Stranger in Paradise.” Its success is remarkable, because he never finished the opera.

Borodin’s early life

Alexander Borodin, born in 1833, was the illegitimate son of an elderly Georgian prince and a young Russian woman. In such cases, illegitimate children were registered as the children of a serf. Therefore, he got his name from one Porfiry Borodin.

His mother, well-educated and well off financially, home schooled him along with one of his girl cousins. He showed an interest in music, particularly band instruments, when he was 8. He could hear a piece and play it on the piano, so his mother hired a piano teacher for him. Borodin composed his first piece the following year and later learned cello.

It sounds like the start of a successful musical career, but Borodin also had a great interest in science. He started medical school in 1850 and upon graduation started to work in a military hospital. He earned a doctorate in chemistry in 1858 and, in 1859, continued his studies in Heidelberg, Germany. All the while, he continued to enjoy music as a hobby, both playing and composing.

Borodin’s career

While in Heidelberg, he met and fell in love with a Russian woman, Ekaterina Protopova, a brilliant pianist who was being treated for tuberculosis. When they returned to Russia, they got married, and Borodin started his career as chemistry professor.

At about the same time, he met Mily Balakirev and renewed his acquaintance with Modest Mussorgsky, whom he had met earlier. The three of them, plus Cesar Cui and Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, soon became known as the “Mighty Handful,” composers who thought Russian music should be composed on Russian models and not Western European ones. Borodin still regarded music as a hobby and only composed on weekends or when he was too sick to go to work.

On top of his research and musical activities, Borodin founded a medical school for women, took care of an ailing wife, and otherwise took on more work than he could handle. He wrote to his wife, “In trying to be a Glinka [composer], a Stupishin [civil servant], scientist, commissioner, artist, government official, philanthropist, father of other people’s children, doctor and invalid, I end up being the last in line.”

The stress took a toll on him. In 1887 (when he was 53), he went to a costume party dressed as a peasant. He enjoyed himself greatly until the moment he had a fatal aneurism.

Prince Igor

Borodin’s First Symphony made a great impression and he started his Second. Like most composers of the time, however, he wanted to compose an opera. The music critic Vladimir Stasov sent him The Story of Igor’s Army, an epic poem supposedly from the 12th century. It recounts the story of a Russian prince and his war with invading tribes.

Borodin started work on it in September 1868. Unfortunately, he did not prepare his libretto, or even sketch out a complete story line before he started composing music. After about a year of writing words and music for individual pieces, he lay the project aside.

In 1872, Borodin again began to work on Prince Igor, but other projects always seemed more important. He did complete enough to have the closing chorus performed in 1876. Other performances of excerpts followed.

At his death, Borodin left a lot of unfinished music. He had finished some parts of Prince Igor, including “Polovtsian Dances,” and had completed piano sketches for others. Other sections existed only as fragments if at all. He had no libretto or even scenario for long stretches of the opera.

He had spoken at length with Rimsky-Korsakov and others over the years about his often-changing intentions. Rimsky-Korsakov and his student Alexander Glazunov cobbled together a performable version. Glazunov reconstructed the Overture based on memory of Borodin’s playing of it and a few sketches. He composed enough music to fill in gaps in Act III. Rimsky-Korsakov composed other parts and completed the orchestration. The two of them did not, however, incorporate all of Borodin’s sketches.

The opera received its first performance in November 1890. Some subsequent performances differ from the Rimsky Korsakov/Glazunov version and incorporate some sketches they didn’t.

Synopsis

Borodin never quite made up his mind about the order of events. Many productions simply use the Rimsky-Korsakov/Glazunov version. Others rearrange or omit material, sometimes based on reexamination of Borodin’s surviving materials.

Prince Igor of the city-state of Putivl sets out with his son Vladimir to pursue Central Asian invaders led by Konchak Khan. He leaves his brother-in-law Galitzky behind to govern. Galitzky, however, is a traitor looking for opportunity to usurp the throne.

Konchak defeats and captures Igor and Vladimir, who falls in love with Konchak’s daughter. Konchak throws a banquet in honor of his captives, culminating in the” Polovtsian Dances,” which extol his greatness.

He offers Igor his freedom if he will promise peace. Igor refuses and escapes. Upon his return to Putivl, he finds it in shambles after Galitzky’s failed coup. Hie people are overjoyed to see him.

Polovtsian Dances

Borodin announced performance of the “Polovtsian Dances” in 1879, but he had not finished the orchestration. He took the score to Rimsky-Korsakov’s house, where the two of them and Anatoly Lyadov divided it into three parts and hastily scored it.

In the context of the opera, the dances include a chorus singing the praises of Kohchak Khan. Concert performances often omit it.

Sergei Diaghilev chose the “Polovtsian Dances” as part of the first season of his Ballet Russes in 1909, with choreography by Michel Fokine. Fokine later noted that, up till that time, the corps de ballet usually served only as accompaniment to the soloists. When the corps danced without soloists, they delighted the eye but did not express emotion.

Whatever Borodin had in mind for the dances, the plot and music preclude soloists. Therefore, Fokine devised expressive crowd dances. He often started to work on a dance armed with extensive research, but he knew nothing of the Polovtsians as a culture. In his book Against the Current, he wrote

On this occasion I came to Borodin with the score under my arm, and that was all the weaponry I had.
However worried I was before I started work, that was totally replaced by confidence in myself when I commenced the staging. No-one could stand in my path. Everything was so clearly drawn before me, and I believed that if the Polovtsians didn’t dance like that, then to Borodin’s music that was how they should dance.

Borodin hits the chart

High school classmates George Forrest and Robert Wright wrote their senior class musical and then got jobs with MGM. For their first job, they incorporated a theme from Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony into a movie version of Sigmund Romberg’s Maytime. Thereafter, they became known for specializing in making popular songs from classical music.

They collaborated on the Broadway musical Song of Norway in 1944, based on the music of Edvard Grieg, and it became a hit. In 1953, they collaborated on Kismet, based on a 1911 play by Edward Knoblock.  It was set in Baghdad, so the team chose to base the songs on Borodin’s music as being suitably exotic. They used five excerpts from Prince Igor. “Polovtsian Dances” alone forms the basis of five pieces, most famously “Stranger in Paradise.”

At the time Kismet opened, only a few musicals were running on Broadway, none of them very successful. Also, the newspapers were on strike. Kismet became a hit by word of mouth.

When the strike was over, critic Brooks Atkinson complained that Kismet was cobbled together “from a storehouse of spare parts.” By that time, though, reviews could neither harm nor help it.

Kismet won the 1954 Tony Award for Best Musical and became a hit film the following year. “Stranger in Paradise” became a major hit and very likely the first introduction to Borodin’s music for many people. Tony Bennett made the best-known recording. It spent 16 weeks on the chart, including two as the number one single.

Sources:

Borodin, Alexander Porfir’yevich / Gerald Abraham and David Lloyd-Jones, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Grove Dictionaries of Music, 1980)
George Forrest/Robert Wright, Kismet, musical (after works by Alexander Borodin) / Joseph Stevenson, AllMusic
Polovtsian Dances / Mariinsky Theatre
Polovtsian Dances: musical thrills from the chemist who composed too little / Classic FM
Synopsis: Prince Igor / Metropolitan Opera