Gnarly Buttons

Gnarly Buttons, concerto for clarinet and chamber ensemble by American composer John Adams that premiered in London on October 19, 1996.

Adams used the word buttons in part as an homage to Gertrude Stein’s experiment in Cubist writing Tender Buttons but also to refer to the contemporary prominence of buttons in sound production and recording technology. (He used the word gnarly in its sense of “knotted” or “twisted.”) The work was jointly commissioned by Present Music, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the London Sinfonietta, both contemporary (or new) music ensembles.

Adams featured the clarinet at least in part because it was the instrument that he played in his youth and ultimately set aside in favour of composition. The work also employs a string quartet together with double bass, English horn, bassoon, trombone, one player on banjo, mandolin, and guitar, and two keyboard players. The keyboardists make use of a standard piano as well as keyboard samplers (electronic instruments that can produce virtually any “sampled” sound on pitch). The diversity of instruments allows for a great variety of instrumental timbres with shifting colours of sound that produce a kaleidoscope of aural impressions.

Gnarly Buttons is structured in three movements. The first, “The Perilous Shore,” borrows the melody of an old Protestant shape-note hymn that begins “O Lord steer me from that perilous shore,” which Adams varies and develops in new directions. The second, “Hoedown (Mad Cow),” opts for an earthier, more rhythmic perspective. The last, “Put Your Loving Arms Around Me,” begins sweetly and gently before becoming, in the composer’s words, “gnarled and crabbed at the end.” Taken together the movements invert the old classical model of beginning and ending a concerto with virtuosic drama while giving the centre over to quiet lyricism.