Alexander Borodin was a professor of chemistry and a composer at once — and reached the heights in both callings without ever having enough time for either. The Bogatyr Symphony, Prince Igor, In the Steppes of Central Asia were written between laboratory experiments and lectures.
He was born in 1833 in St. Petersburg, the illegitimate son of a Georgian prince. He studied medicine, then chemistry. In 1862 he met Balakirev, leader of the Mighty Handful, and joined the circle.
The opera Prince Igor, his great project, was left unfinished. He worked on it for eighteen years, unhurried — "there is no time." After his death, Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov completed it from his sketches.
He died in 1887, at a masquerade ball — he collapsed and did not get up. His heart. He was fifty-three. The Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor became the melody of the Broadway musical Kismet — and have played in restaurants the world over.