Tove Jansson and Tuulikki Pietilä met for the first time in 1955 by the record player when Tuulikki played records at the Artists’ Guild Christmas party in Helsinki. From the very beginning, music was a strong common interest, and over time their joint music collection grew and became extensive in both format and genres. 

Singer and actress Emma Klingenberg has spent years going through Tove Jansson’s and Tuulikki Pietilä’s music collection. In her book Detta är min målarsång (“This is my painter’s song”), which is about Tove Jansson’s musical world, Klingenberg talks about the collection, which has so far been an unexplored treasure trove. 

Read more about Klingenberg’s work with the book!

While working on the book, Klingenberg has gone through Tove’s and Tuulikki’s entire music collection, which consists of 78s, LPs and C-cassettes. The oldest of the 78s was Oskar Merikanto’s ‘Lienan kahvilaulu’ from 1915. The 78s, also called shellac records, which were expensive and fragile, are only a small part of the collection. Most of the LPs were bought on the various trips Tove and Tuulikki made all over the world. When they went to parties, they brought a selection of the records with them in padded binders, knowing that the music was a big part of the party atmosphere and they also liked to hang out by the record player.

Listen to the music that Tove and Tuulikki danced to on Spotify:

The cassette collection

Tuulikki was interested in the technological development of different formats, so when the C-cassette came along in the 1970s, she bought a magneto phone that allowed her to tape her favourites, make her own mix tapes, and build up an even more personal music collection. She could now make ‘mix tapes’, cassettes with a mixture of songs from different records or even songs she recorded from the radio. 

Detail from one of Tuulikki Pietilä’s note books

Tuulikki was very meticulous about keeping records of her cassette collection, writing down all the information in thick, blue index books. The title, artist, composer and sometimes also the length were written in both the register book and the cassette cases. In addition, the cassettes were numbered and arranged in different colour categories according to musical genre in a detailed system. She also wrote little notes such as ‘Tove’s favourite blues’ (it’s ‘Ode to Billie Joe’ by Bobbie Gentry) or ‘Good!’ in the envelope of the cassettes.

Part of the cassette collection

She also hand-crafted cassette shelves that were expanded as needed. In her book, Klingenberg quotes a letter written by Tove in which she tells us that Tuulikki expanded a shelf and notes ‘hope it lasts a long time, shelves always go too fast!’. 

In addition to all the detailed information about the contents of the cassette, the decoration of the cassette cases was also important. Tuulikki usually used postcards and other pictures that she cut to fit the cases.

Tove Jansson’s illustration for a cassette from a trip to London

Examples of categories in the cassette collection:

Classics

Chanson français

New Orleans, blues and jazz

Dancing

Folk music by country (each country has its own colour and category)

In addition to making mixtapes and transferring whole LPs to cassette, Tuulikki also made audio recordings when they were travelling. There are recordings from everything from the famous jazz club Preservation Hall in New Orleans to work-related stuff like radio interviews with Tove. Tove often made illustrations for these cassettes recorded while travelling.

Tove’s interpretation of a punk rocker from a London trip in 1982

Rock-hungry soldiers

In the end, the collection consisted of over a thousand cassettes and six hundred LPs, all neatly registered in three thick note books. During the winters, Tove and Tuulikki lived in separate apartments in the same block of flats in Helsinki and the cassette collection lived with Tuulikki, although Tove had a music shelf in her studio. 

Summers were spent on the island of Klovharun, and they would pack up their favourite cassettes and bring them to the island. There was a great variety of music they brought with them; classical music like the Brandenburg Concertos, country music, folk music and jazz. 

In 1981, during combat exercises in the area, the soldiers broke into the hut on Klovharun and took a large part of the cassettes. They left the classical music and jazz behind, but Tuulikki’s notes provide information about what was stolen. 

Apparently, Tove and Tuulikki listened to Alice Cooper, Janis Joplin, David Bowie, and Johnny Cash, among others, on the island during the summer nights.

Read more about Tove Jansson’s and Tuulikki Pietilä’s interest in music in Emma Klingenberg’s book Detta är min målarsång: Tove Jansson och musiken. The book is only available in Swedish at the moment.