Michael Ayrton (1921-1975)

Maze Music leads on from the 1965 Maze Maker series in which Ayrton transforms the maze into a musical instrument. Refering to the earlier series Ayrton explains "[Daedalus] provided, as the creator of the labyrinth at Knossos in which the Minotaur was imprisoned, the starting point for the series ... He has become any man who, during his life, builds in and around himself a maze of circumstances and experiences and this, it seems to me we all do. This labyrinth has two inevitably linked functions. It excludes to protect and contains to imprison." (M. Ayrton, Michael Ayrton Drawings and Sculpture, London, 1966.)