The pop star opens up about her desire to publish 34 Scores For Piano, Organ, Harpsichord And Celese.

Two weeks ago, we reported that Björk is about to publish a book of sheet music that encompasses the Icelandic artist‘s prolific career. Now she’s revealed in a letter why and how she come up with the idea in the first place. Apparently the project was a long time in the making. The letter reads:

in the autumn of 2009 i sat down and wanted to decipher and reevaluate what musical education meant to me. the frustrated musicologist in me went ahead and completed the educational biophilia which since has been taught all around the world and is now a permanent part of the scandinavian curriculum



i also wanted to question how i felt about musical documentation, when cds were slowly becoming obsolete, i was curious about the difference of midi (digital notation) and classical notation and enthusiastic in blurring the lines and at which occasions and how one would share music in these new times. what is the difference of karaoke and the lyrical recitals of the 19th century? can one meet at bonfires and sing techno songs? (well icelanders do obvs) maybe i should share digital notation that people could connect to their synths or do harpsichord versions of electronic beats to enjoy in the living rooms and hopefully families singalong to

100 years ago most music was shared through scores, does that even apply to today? and if so how?

from these questions i started working with jónas sen on gathering together my string, choir, vocal and brass arrangements through the years and arranging them for different keyboards such as organs, pianos, celestas and harpsichords.

i also talked to my longtime collaborators m/m and asked them to design a font for notes in the same way they would for letters. that of course became technically almost impossible but we believe we have now somehow found a program were everyone can design their own fonts to align gracefully to their music

and last but not least: as a soft feminist stance i decided to put importance on my arrangements through the years (i feel still today most people are not aware that i have done the majority of the choir, brass, string and vocal arrangements myself through the years) by doing concerts where we have transformed all these arrangements over to strings to emphasize that part of my work. so far we have played albert hall, harpa hall in reykjavík, the auditorio in mexico city and will be playing the disney hall on the 30th of may. and i will be singing on top

i hope you like it

warmthness

björk

Her book 34 Scores For Piano, Organ, Harpsichord And Celese will come out on June 5. Gear up by watching her recent virtual reality video for the song “Notget” below.

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Read more: Björk slamming systemic sexism in the music industry.