Who wrote a book on music which extends to over two thousand pages, but is best known for an alphabet and a complete set of digits which took 24 years to collect and was completed in 1975?

The answer seems to have fluttered by everyone so I'll reveal that I was asking about the Norwegian born naturalist photographer and publisher Kjell Bloch Sandved (1922-2015). While in Norway he published huge volumes called "The World of Art" and "The World of Music".
https://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Music-Kjell-Bloch-Sandved/dp/B0006AYNWK

He left Norway for the US in 1960 and planned to write another encyclopaedia devoted to the natural world. While in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington he saw a butterfly with a perfect letter 'F' and determined to find butterflies with all the other letters on them. He did volunteer work at the Smithsonian, learnt how to use a camera and was hired as their first full time nature photographer, travelling around the world. After completing his first draft of the Butterfly Alphabet in 1975, he continued to look for forms on butterflies into the mid 1980s.
https://mymodernmet.com/kjell-bloch-sandved-butterfly-alphabet/