The dictionary of obscure sorrows: ambedo

Instrumentation: Percussion quartet - one vibraphone and one marimba (5 octave)

Duration: 8 minutes

Written for So Percussion and the Princeton Sound Kitchen

PDF of Score & Parts For Sale Here

Recording available upon request (please email annika@socolofsky.org)

Program note: The concept for this piece comes from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a collection of words invented by John Koenig that “aims to fill a hole in the [English] language—to give a name to emotions we all might experience but don’t yet have a word for.” The title for this piece comes from the definition for “ambedo.” 
 
ambedo n. a kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details— raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee—which leads to a dawning awareness of the haunting fragility of life, a mood whose only known cure is the vuvuzela. 

- John Koenig, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows