Experimental Aesthetics of Otakar Zich

The bachelor's thesis focuses on the part of the scientific legacy of the important Czech aesthetician Otakar Zich (1879-1934), in which he formulates the principles of the use of experiment in the research of some aesthetic questions, the solution of which he considered controversial. Zich's research work, thus focused, belongs to his early period, in which he primarily dealt with the question of the relationship between music and emotions (moods) and the issue of what belongs to the aesthetic perception of music. The main source for the subject of the thesis is Zich's work Aesthetic Perception of Music, in which he draws on a number of suggestions and proposals from experimental research in the field of psychology and aesthetics as it took shape during the second half of the 19th century, while consciously following the suggestions of his teacher Otakar Hostinský. In the thesis, these stimuli are monitored, evaluated and placed in the context of the formation of Zich's experimental aesthetics. The aim of the thesis is to analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the method with the help of which Zich, based on the results of his experimental research, formulated a theory of the semantic image in music and interpreted feelings and moods in relation to music in a completely new way, including..