Interview Transcript
Chuck was 5 – or maybe 6 – years old when his father, Vincent C. Talley, wrote his letter to Leonard Bernstein from Scotia, New York. I got in touch with him via his sister, Lynne, whose interview is also featured in this collection. We agreed to speak in January 2025. We talked about the extents and limits of Vincent’s musical tastes, and why Chuck thought concert hall etiquette mattered to his father.
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January 14, 1961
Dear Mr. Bernstein,
Last week, while attending a hockey game at RPI, we became aware of the Young People’s Concert, which will be presented on February 17. We purchased our tickets and have made plans to bring our two children, ages 6 and 8.
We have enjoyed a number of your television programmes and have also taken our children to attend a number of Saturday morning rehearsals at Tanglewood over the past four years.
My purpose in writing is to ask your consideration of an idea which comes to us from one of the Children’s plays, which has been arranged through the Schenectady branch of AAUW in which my wife has been quite active. Before the play began, the director explained good audience manners to the children who, in this case, ranged from 3rd to 5th grade. It occurs to me that in a program of the nature of your Young People’s Concert, such a short explanation of concert audience manners might also be apropos – it would (I know from experience) be a delightful way to learn proper conduct, and, coming from a person of recognised authority, leave a lasting impression.
This type of programming may already be in your thinking. If not, I submit it for your consideration. In any event, we look forward to a delightful Saturday morning in February.
Best regards,
Vincent C Talley
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Childhood … let’s see. Born in Coshocton, Ohio. My grandfather – his father – was an electrical engineer from Ohio University; course, dad was an Ohio University electrical engineer. At a very early age, they moved to Carlston, West Virginia, which is where he grew up. My grandfather worked for Appalachian Power Company, which is appropriate for me because I worked for Appalachian Power then, years later. But anyway, yeah, I grew up … grew up in Charleston … had …
We used to hear stories of him building balsa wood aeroplanes. Back in – that would have been back probably in the ’30s, very early ‘40s, perhaps. My grandfather did quite a bit of construction and handiwork, and I understand there’s a house in Charleston that has them walled up inside the wallboard – that there may be a collection someplace up there. When I worked for Appalachian Power, I would travel into Charleston periodically and run by there, and I always was tempted to stop – but never did – just to say, ‘Hey, can I tear your wall down?’
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My grandfather was … was famously always, always said he was tone deaf and he couldn’t, couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. That was grandpa. My grandmother never really talked about it. But, you know, certainly somehow that … it was, you know, became an interest of my dad. I know his cousin, Richard, who was similar to a brother because my father was a single child, as was Richard. But he was he was the tuba player, the sousaphone player in the band. So they … and I know that basically because we still have the picture downstairs, and so … but, I would just assume maybe it came through … you know, through school.
He was a proud graduate of Stonewall Jackson High School and played in the band. Was French horn, as I recall, at least from the pictures. And you know, thinking from the musical side of it, I know we always had a violin in our house, but I never heard it played. So I’m going to assume that someplace along the way he … he played violin. But that goes … my mother was a clarinettist, too, and we never heard that played, either. So …
But anyway, yeah, he did marching band, etc., off to Ohio University, working as an electrical engineer, graduating that way, went off to Michigan for a master’s degree and settled into General Electric as an application engineer for stations and that type of thing, substations, etc., travelled around quite a bit through their early programmes of development, you know. Being General Electric in the US, Schenectady was their main kind of industrial headquarters. He ended up there, which is where both Lynne and I were born – in upstate New York.
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Yeah, 26 Orchard Drive. It was it was a great place. That that … my parents quote unquote built the house, you know, contracted to have it built and whatever. Not like my grandfather – was there every step of the way, I don’t think. But no, it was a small Cape Cod, sat on a nice piece of property. Being Orchard Drive, the actual orchard was behind our house.
It was a … not a cul-de-sac, it was a circle. So basically, you came in into Orchard Drive, and you came around the circle. We lived when you came in, we would have lived down about five o’clock. Had a family next door who was also General Electric. Scotia is a suburb of Schenectady. And so lots … virtually everybody there in Schenectady at that time seemed to have a connection or worked for General Electric. But yeah, it was a great place to live for six years.
There were lots of kids in the neighbourhood, so … and it being a circle … so very safe to be out there riding bikes around, you know, chasing butterflies and getting apples out of the apple orchard during wintertime. The Van Buren farm, which was the name of the farm that originally owned the orchard or owned that property, had a real nice hill on it that went down down towards the creek.
And so in the wintertime, at four and five-years-old, it was, you know, okay, kids, head out the back door and, you know – no parental supervision. Everybody just went, and that’s where you went, you know, kind of back around the corner and where you went sledding. We had woods to run around in a creek down in the woods to hitch minnows and do whatever. So it was a neat place.
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There was always sort of an undercurrent of music around … music and news radio. And news radio before it was got all the news radio, you know, “ahhh” stuff that we have today. Back when it was truly news radio. In the car, you always had news radio on. Although, several trips when we were out late at night, or I was with them out late at night, we got to listen to Miller to Midnight.
So the Glen Miller orchestra from the 40s … so there was a radio programme called Miller to Midnight, and I still remember hearing that, which I’m going to say introduced me into Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman and that whole the genre – the big bands back in those days, which leads into the big bands of the ‘70s with Buddy Rich and Maynard Ferguson, and some of those bands. So I really enjoyed those. Still do listen to their music some.
But you had the radio going at the house. You had the radio on the classical music station out of Philadelphia growing up, or the hi-fi. It wasn’t a radio; it was a hi-fi. And … or you had the records … the records there that had … there were some full-length classical music recordings, say, of Philadelphia orchestra or the New York Philharmonic, whatever.
But then there was also some of the … what I call the K-tel-type records where you might have, you know, 25 classic music whatever’s in one album. So you got like … you got like 5 minutes of each one of, you know, 25 different things. I wish I had those records. I may still have them someplace on box. But you had that … that, to be honest, it was interesting because that builds, say, for me, from him, okay, you know, this belongs to, I don’t know, the 1812 Overture, or this belongs to, you know, whatever Tchaikovsky’s Fourth or yeah. You know, different things
So there was always sort of that undercurrent of music. And then there was my sister playing scales on the piano incessantly.
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I guess the big thing that I remember from TV that the really left an impression on me – and it was with Dad – was the moon landing in ‘68, because he did his proper research and set up his camera so that he could take still pictures of the TV screen. So, you know, someplace in the boxes and boxes and boxes of pictures that we have or slides – he did a lot of slide pictures – we have, you know, the pictures of the screen for the actual, you know, the moon landing.
So you know, with dad, he was still he was trying to figure that stuff out. Kind of like today, we think of, you know, you just record, you’re recording this. You know, back in 1968, of course, there was no way to really record easily at the house. So he was … he was doing the stills.
I will say we were one of the early families – and it was due to dad working at General Electric – to have colour TV. I recall we got a colour TV back sometime in the early ‘60s. So we were able to just, you know, see Walt Disney in colour and that type of thing. We did some TV watching as a fam… or sort of as a family, but, you know, they would come in periodically, but they really didn’t sit down. Mom and dad didn’t really …. that wasn’t really their habit to watch TV.
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Yeah, I think it was classical, jazz, popular. His popular kind of ended with rock. But, yeah, some of the ‘50s … the ‘50s popular music. I don’t know, the Vic Damone and I don’t know, some of the different folks. I don’t recall him ever really … I was very excited in college – I came home and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ came in on the radio, and I said, ‘Dad, you got to listen to this!’ And that lasted a couple of minutes, and he just wasn’t interested.
You know, I think, I’m going to say a lot of it had to do with volume, maybe more than anything else. It seemed like he really … he never really … really didn’t like just loud stuff going on. We didn’t go places that there was a big cacophony of noise. It was always, you know, you went to the library, went to the museum, you went here, you went there.
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Well, as noted in the letter, I knew how … I knew my concert audience manners. From a personal level, it meant that he could enjoy the music without getting interrupted. You know, in all sincerity. You know, I kind of laughed when I saw that and I thought about the recent hubbub over Wicked coming out. And what do you do about the people who sing in the audience to all the songs? I can see my dad, if he was around today and interested in that movie and whatever, him being the same way. You know, the audience interruptions – it’s having the proper courtesies to the people in the audience. And, you know, I think that’s really what rooted that.
I hate … I hate to pin it that way, but to me, it’s almost, I’m gonna say my dad was selfish. It wasn’t so much that, ‘Hey, I know how to listen to music’ or whatever. It’s like, ‘Would you’all please be quiet because I’m trying to listen to the music?’ You know, it was more of an appreciation of what the music was rather than some kind of a high level, whatever.
I guess I could see him maybe tapping somebody on the shoulder and say, ‘Would you mind?’ During a concert or something. But no, I can very much see, as far as this letter, I can very much see him writing that. But it surprised me that he wrote that. So in other words, I think he would more maybe internalise it. Perhaps more he wouldn’t come out, you know, stand up in the middle of a concert and say, ‘Would y’all just shut up?’ Yeah. But he would think it.
So, and, you know, I never did think of him as being elitist. You know, I don’t know if my mother would have let him. But yeah, it was just … it was just that’s the proper way to, you know, you properly went to the concert. You know, as I think … was thinking back to going to concerts back in the day, it was still back in the coat and tie day. So, of course, when you went to the … the Marple New Town Symphony, the local symphony, it was, you know, for him, it was coat and tie. You were still … and everybody was still dressed, so to speak, which to me, brings a certain type of decorum to it, regardless.
Back in … back in those days, that’s what you did, and this is the way you should act when you go to something formal like that. It’s kind of going to church, you wear your coat and tie and, you know, your best bonnet and that type of thing.
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I would just say from a perspective of who Bernstein was. I mean, you know, he was he was kind of like the renaissance man of music. You know, he was writing West Side Story. He was, you know, leading the New York Philharmonic. He was, you know, etc., etc., etc. He was, you know, I think it was just that … that part of it.
So I don’t want to call that celebrity, but because it’s very … what am I trying to think here? I mean, he really knows his craft type of thing. I mean, you know, he’s just very, very good at it. Plus, he was an engaging personality. He didn’t come across as … as snobbish or elitist or whatever. He came across more at least through the concerts.
And as Dad mentioned, going to Tanglewood, you know, I would say he would come across much more personable than many of … many of the other folks, whatever, but um, you know, I don’t know. I’m just kind of looking back through my memories of why he would be different than, I don’t know, Eugene Ormandy. You know, well, who’s that? Okay. Well, it’s, you know, Philadelphia. Leonard Bernstein, he’s on TV.
I don’t recall this concert at all. Um, but I do recall watching young people’s concerts on Saturday morning in good old grainy black and white. I just remember those. And, you know, Bernstein was out there doing that type of thing. So, you know, he became … again, you could … make you connect with him.