The title Poerpasledam is a corrupted form of the Afrikaans phrase that translates from the French pour passer le temps, meaning "to pass the time".
According to Stephanus Muller, Van Wyk’s early life and career were deeply shaped by the hardships he and his fellow citizens faced as sensitive artists growing up in an increasingly polarized apartheid South Africa.
His struggle to create beauty in harsh social environments is a recurring theme in his work, a “hard, stony, flinty path” that would come to define his life and art.
The first was held at Wigmore Hall in London on 20 February 1945, as part of the Boosey & Hawkes concert series, with Myra Hess and Howard Ferguson as the pianists.
Hess and Ferguson were key figures in the National Gallery concert series, where musical performances were held continuously during the war, despite the surrounding devastation.
[7] Late in 1980, despite a long period of depression, Van Wyk revisited Poerpasledam and adapted it for flute and piano when Éva Tamássy, a flautist and colleague at Stellenbosch University's Music Department, invited him to embark on a concert tour to South West Africa (Namibia).