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I doubt that any composer
other than Alexander Borodin can boast of having posthumously been awarded
a Tony Award. Such are the enticing melodies contained in his music
that they were adapted for the highly successful 1953 musical
Kismet. Borodin was a Russian composer,
doctor, and chemist. He was a member
of the group of composers called "The Mighty Handful,"
or "The Mighty Five," as some refer to them. But some
wags refer to the group as the "Amateurs"
because most of them had other professions as well.
Borodin was an outstanding chemist who contributed significantly to
his field. But if these so-called five, Mily Balakirev (the
leader), Cesar Cui, Modest Mussorgsky,
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin
were amateurs, they were amateurs in the very best sense
of the word. The group's compelling goal
was to produce music of a specifically Russian
nature rather than imitating older
European traditions. Borodin,
because of his demanding day job, wrote music mostly in his spare time, and many
of his works took years to complete. Not so
with his second string quartet, however, which was completed in a matter of
months during vacation time.
The unabashedly romantic nature of this quartet,
its irresistible melodies and evocative harmonies must
have pleased Borodin's "Mighty Handful" colleagues
for in addition, it exudes a distinctly
Russian character. But these alluring qualities tend
to mask the craftsmanship of every one of the work's four movements.
Borodin was no simple heart on the sleeve composer,
as witnessed by his rarely played first string quartet,
subtitled "On a Theme of Beethoven." In this work,
the Finale of Beethoven's late quartet, Opus 130,
rather than that atmospheric Russian landscape,
was his inspiration. Still,
Borodin's Second Quartet will be the one that is loved
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and remembered. It is hard for me to hear this quartet
without having the evocative melody of the third movement, the Nocturne,
play over and over in my inner ear.
That long, languorous melody, first played by the cello
and then the violin could be the story of two
lovers speaking longingly to one another.
The composers of Kismet must have been seduced by the melody's sweet melancholy.
It appeared as "And This is my Beloved"
in the musical, along with "Baubles, Bangles and Beads,"
which is from the second movement of the Quartet. I can imagine people
leaving a performance of Kismet happily whistling "And This is My Beloved"
as they walk down the street, and then unwittingly
bringing a little bit of Russia home with them.
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Now, an important part of Russian culture
was and continues to be the indigenous
folk music. The Mighty Five wanted to write music
informed by this rich repository of native expression,
and not to imitate German formalism.
In the Second String Quartet,
Borodin said that he "attempted to conjure up
an impression of a light-hearted evening spent
in one of the suburban pleasure gardens of St. Petersburg."
Replete with eastern melodies and harmonic exoticism,
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the music in this quartet is the essence of Russian
flair, but, Borodin could not resist
paying his respects to another group of composers,
the first Viennese school, which included Haydn,
Mozart and Beethoven. Even in the famous
third movement entitled “Notturno”, or "Nocturne,"
the middle section includes counterpoint,
a kind of musical conversation between
voices that is reminiscent of Mozart.
To top it off, the finale makes direct reference
to the final movement of Beehoven's last complete work,
the String Quartet Number 16 in F Major,
Opus 135. He presents a theme
that both poses a question and gives an answer
like Beethoven's, "Muss es sein?" and
"Es muss sein," translated as "Must it be?"
"It must be." Though Borodin
belonged to a group that eschewed western influence,
he greatly respected the
Viennese classical tradition, and simply
could not write a string quartet without acknowledging
those who made it so great.
[MUSIC]
Arnold SteinhardtPerformance Faculty
Dr. Mia ChungInstructor of Interpretive Analysis
