Their art is a summons
to individual life. Borodin in particular came upon the Russian people
at a moment when, like a tribe that has quit its fields in search of
better pasturage, and has wandered far and found itself in barren and
difficult and almost impassable ground, it was bewildered and
despondent, and felt itself lost and like to perish in the wilderness.
And while his folk lay prone, he had arisen and mounted the encircling
ridge. And with a joyous cry, and the flaunting of a banner, he called
them to the way they had to traverse, and told them the road was found.
His work is not large in bulk. In a comparatively long life, long at
least by the side of that of a Mozart or a Moussorgsky, he succeeded in
producing only a single opera, "Prince Igor," two symphonies and the
torso of a third, a symphonic sketch, "On the Steppes," two string
quartets, and a score of songs. And many of these works are incomplete.
"Prince Igor" is a fragmentary composition, a series of not quite
satisfactorily conjoined numbers, a golden mosaic from which whole
groups of enameled bits are missing. Indeed, Borodin had not even
notated the overture when he died, and we know it thanks only to a
pupil who had heard him play it on the piano and recollected it well
enough to reconstruct it.
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