• Main Performer: Michael Daugherty

Review

This highly political work is for string quartet with pre-recorded tape. Composer Michael Daugherty assembled the tape part from historical recordings of the voice of J. Edgar Hoover, director of the USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 1924 to 1972, deriving from various speeches he made from 1941 to 1972. It begins with one of Hoover's favorite mottos, "The FBI is as close to you as your nearest telephone," intended as a reassuring component of Hoover's assiduous courtship of public opinion, but carrying an unintended connotation of Hoover's fondness of wiretapping.

The string quartet part was composed to follow the cadences of Hoover's speech patterns; this speech-melody is also affected by Daugherty's opinion of Hoover. He found the FBI director a mixture of the grim, the threatening, and the "darkly comic." The quartet also has musical patterns that copy the sounds of machine guns, patriotic songs, and sirens. ~ All Music Guide

Albums with Complete Performances of the Work

Title	Date
Howl, U.S.A.	1996
Absolute Mix	2000