Otakar Zich (25 March 1879 â 9 July 1934) was a Czech composer and aesthetician.
Zich was born on 25 March 1879 in MÃÂstec Králové. In his music education he studied as a self-taught man. Years later, he became a pupil of the prominent nineteenth-century Czech aesthetician Otakar Hostinský, and a protégé of the iconoclastic musicologist and critic ZdenÃÂk Nejedlý. In the years 1903âÂÂ1906 he taught physics and mathematics at the High School in Domaà ¾lice. In the years leading up to the First World War Zich lived in Prague, actively participating in musical life as a critic. In this capacity he supported the efforts of Nejedlý's pro-Smetana faction against the intellectual descendants of AntonÃÂn Dvoà Âák, especially during the so-called Dvoà Âák Affair of 1911âÂÂ1914, when he called into question the artistic integrity of Dvoà Âák's compositional language. These activities firmly allied Zich with Nejedlý's academic circle at Charles University, where, in 1924, he was appointed professor of Aesthetics. He held this position until his death. He died on 9 July 1934 in OubÃÂnice (today part of Bystà Âice).
As a composer, Zich was largely self-taught, although he can be said to belong to the post-Smetana lineage of Czech composers (which includes ZdenÃÂk Fibich, Josef Bohuslav Foerster, and Otakar OstrÃÂil, all connected in some way to Nejedlý). His main contributions to concert life in Prague were the operas MalÃÂà Âský nápad (The Artist's Idea, 1908), Vina (Guilt, 1915), and Preciézky (on Zich's own translation of Molière's Les précieuses ridicules, 1924). He also created several solo vocal and choral compositions. His musical style straddles the divide between late Romanticism and early neo-classicism, combining dense orchestration, Wagnerian leitmotifs, and an intensely linear counterpoint with a playful referentiality to past styles. With the exception of Preciézky and a few individual shorter works, most of Zich's music remains unpublished.
Because of his association with Nejedlý, performances of Zich's music often met with bitter controversy in interwar Prague, where critics assessed new compositions based on factional allegiances. The lowest point of this was undoubtedly the premiere of Vina in 1922, which the arch-conservative critic AntonÃÂn à  ilhan attacked in a vituperative article entitled Finis musicae (The End of Music). à  ilhan's argument focused primarily on the opera's orchestral score, where the counterpoint occasionally borders on atonality.
Zich was also the author of many folkloric studies and books on aesthetics: foremost among these are Estetické vnÃÂmanàhudby (The Aesthetic Perception of Music, 1911) and Estetika dramatického umÃÂnà(The Aesthetics of Drama, 1931). In each of these he explored the application of phenomenology, derived from the work of Hegel and Husserl, to branches of the performing arts, and his theories are still the subject of debate in present-day Czech academic circles. As a musicologist he also devoted himself to the study of Smetana's life and works, with numerous analytical articles appearing in Czech-language music journals.