Björk Announces Career-Spanning Songbook 34 Scores

Björk has announced a new career-spanning songbook. It’s titled 34 Scores for Piano, Organ, Harpsichord and Celeste, and it comes out June 5 via Wise Publications. She made the book in collaboration with pianist Jonas Sen, design house M/M Paris (responsible for the Vulnicura Live (Luxury Boxset) with the amazing moth mask), and engraving company Notengrafik Berlin. Previously, Björk said she’d been working on the book for the past six years. 34 Scores includes arrangements of songs from Debut, Post, Homogenic, Selmasongs, Vespertine, Medúlla, Drawing Restraint 9, Volta, and Vulnicura. Find all the included songs here; read Björk’s statement on the book below.

Prior to the release date, 34 Scores is available exclusively at the Björk Digital exhibition in Los Angeles (May 19-June 4). She will also perform selections from the songbook with 32 string players at her upcoming L.A. concert on May 30 (at Walt Disney Concert Hall).

Revisit Pitchfork's feature “The Invisible Woman: A Conversation With Björk.”

Björk:

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 tought all around the world and is now a permanent part of scandinavias 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 of 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 emphasizing 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

Correction: An earlier version incorrectly stated the songbook engraver.