Although his compositional output stayed modest, given that his professional life centered on scientific research into aldehydes, Alexander Borodin secured a firm position in Russian musical history. Of the nationalist composers, he proved the most accomplished creative figure. His special talent lay in a singular exoticism, one that stands out most clearly in the "Polovtsian Dances" drawn from the opera Prince Igor.
The illegitimate son of a Georgian prince and a physician’s wife, Borodin grew up in comfortable circumstances. As a boy he mastered several instruments and dabbled in composition, yet his academic training followed other strengths. He pursued chemistry at St. Petersburg’s Medico-Surgical Academy, received his doctorate in 1858, and continued studies in Europe until 1862. Back in Russia he accepted a professorship at his alma mater, all while keeping his devotion to music alive even as an academic career appeared certain.
Meeting Mily Balakirev in 1862 turned Borodin toward the use of Russian folk elements in concert and stage works. He entered the circle of Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, and Cui, later known as “The Five” or “The Mighty Handful.” Balakirev’s influence appears at once in the Symphony No. 1 in E flat major (1867). That same year, 1869, Borodin began the more rugged Symphony No. 2 in B minor and launched work on his principal undertaking, the opulent four-act opera Prince Igor. The symphony took more than five years; Prince Igor stretched across decades. Leaving the opera incomplete at his death, Borodin had meanwhile finished other scores. Rimsky-Korsakov, whose craftsmanship suited Borodin’s colorful idiom, and Alexander Glazunov finished the opera posthumously. Glazunov likewise completed the Symphony No. 3 in A minor, the piece Borodin had continued until his final days.
In addition to teaching chemistry and conducting research, Borodin helped establish medical courses for women in 1872. These duties, together with fragile health throughout the 1880s, limited the time he could give to composition. Even so, as a part-time creator he produced a substantial legacy: more than a dozen substantial songs, assorted piano pieces, two string quartets (the second containing a ravishing Nocturne often heard in an arrangement for string orchestra), and the popular tone poem In the Steppes of Central Asia (1880). Borodin died on February 27, 1887, while attending a ball in St. Petersburg.
