Style
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 Zdeněk Fibich, Josef Bohuslav Foerster, and Otakar Ostrčil, all connected in some way to Nejedlý). His main contributions to concert life in Prague were the operas Malířský 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 With the exception of Preciézky and a few individual shorter works, most of Zich's music remains unpublished.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 Antonín Šilhan attacked in a vituperative article entitled Finis musicae (The End of Music). Šilhan'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 vnímaní hudby (The Aesthetic Perception of Music, 1911) and Estetika dramatického umění (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.
Read more about this topic: Otakar Zich
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