Michael Blake is South African composition’s most important link to the American and British experimental traditions of the second half of the 20th century. It is a connection that derives as much from the composer’s temperament and aesthetic sensibility, as from more conscious decisions relating to the socio-political positioning of composition. As regards the former, Blake’s affinity with composers like Charles Ives and John Cage precedes his mature engagements with these composers through an embrace of certain qualities of openness relating to musical structure and material that can be heard throughout the works recorded on this album. Blake’s “song without words” demonstrates deconstruction, playfulness, irregularity, irony and a postmodern referential sensibility. Apart from “song without words,” which was written in 1972, the seven other works recorded on this album date from between 2008 and 2016, a period of mature compositional activity bookended by the composer’s retirement to the village of Hout Bay near Cape Town late in 2008, and relocation to France in 2015.
