Sychra, Antonín

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Sychra, Antonín

Sychra, Antonín, Czech aesthetician; b. Boskov-ice, June 9, 1918; d. Prague, Oct. 21, 1969. He studied musicology with Helfert at the Univ. of Brno; then continued his training at the Univ. of Prague (Ph.D., 1946); subsequently completed his Habilitation (1952) and received his D.Sc. (1959) there. After lecturing at the Education Research Inst. in Prague, he was made a lecturer (1948), dean (1950), and prof. (1951) at the Prague Academy of Music; also lectured on aesthetics and music history at the Univ. of Prague (from 1952), where he was director of the aesthetics dept. (from 1959). His work, which reveals his preoccupation with a Marxist approach to music and aesthetics, was productive for its contribution to musical semantics. Among his publications are Stranická hudební kritika: Spolutvûrce nove hudby (Party Music Criticism: A Co-creator of New Music; Prague, 1951; Ger. tr., 1953), O hudbu zttrka (The Music of Tomorrow; Prague, 1952), Oestetické vychovë (Aesthetic Education; with O. Chlup; Prague, 1956), and Hudba a slovo z experitnentálního hlediska (Music and Word—an Experimental Approach; with K. Sedlácek; Prague, 1962).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire