 | ||
"Ashokan Farewell" /əˈʃoʊ.kænˌ/ is a piece of music composed by American folk musician Jay Ungar in 1982. For many years it served as a goodnight or farewell waltz at the annual Ashokan Fiddle & Dance Camps run by Ungar and his wife Molly Mason, who gave the tune its name, at the Ashokan Field Campus of SUNY New Paltz (now the Ashokan Center) in Upstate New York.
Contents
The tune was used as the title theme of the 1990 PBS television miniseries The Civil War, and appeared on the 1991 compilation album Songs of the Civil War.
Background
The piece is a waltz in D major, composed in the style of a Scottish lament (e.g., Niel Gow's "Lament for His Second Wife"). Jay Ungar describes the song as coming out of "a sense of loss and longing" after the annual Ashokan Music & Dance Camps ended. The most famous arrangement of the piece begins with a solo violin, later accompanied by guitar and upright bass. Another arrangement, featuring Ungar, Mason, and their family band, is performed with two violins, an acoustic guitar, and a banjo, with the piece beginning with a solo violin.
Before its use as the television series theme, "Ashokan Farewell" was recorded on Waltz of the Wind, the second album by the band Fiddle Fever. The musicians included Ungar and Mason. It also served as a goodnight or farewell waltz at the annual Ashokan Music & Dance Camps that Ungar and Mason run in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Ashokan was the name of a former village in the Catskill region that is now mostly covered by the Ashokan Reservoir.
Use in The Civil War documentary series
In 1984, filmmaker Ken Burns heard "Ashokan Farewell" and was moved by it. He used it in two of his documentary films: Huey Long (1985), and The Civil War (1990), which features the original recording by Fiddle Fever in the beginning of the film. The Civil War drew the greatest attention to the piece. It is played 25 times throughout the eleven-hour series, including during the emotional reading of Sullivan Ballou's letter to his wife in the first episode. The song underlies nearly an hour of film.
Viewers of The Civil War frequently believe the melody is a traditional tune from the Civil War era; in fact, it is the only modern composition on the film's soundtrack, as all other music is authentic 19th-century music.
The song was later used in the Louie episode "The Road: Part II", where Louie dresses up in a Civil War uniform for an old-time photograph.
Other versions
The song has been covered and re-recorded numerous times: