Ashokan Farewell: A Song History

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Fiddler Jay Ungar composed “Ashokan Farewell” in 1982 to mark the end of that summer’s Ashokan camp, which he ran with Molly Mason, now his wife.[1][2] He has recalled that he had most of the melody within 20 to 40 minutes, and that writing it moved him to tears.[1] He wrote it in the manner of a Scottish lament, and sometimes introduces it as “a Scottish lament written by a Jewish guy from the Bronx.”[2]

Painting of a river valley with autumn trees and mountains beyond

Thomas Cole, View on the Catskill—Early Autumn, oil on canvas, 1836–37. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). A Catskills landscape, though not of the Ashokan area itself.

The tune became the theme music of Ken Burns’s PBS series The Civil War, and the 1990 Nonesuch soundtrack album uses the band Fiddle Fever’s recording from Waltz of the Wind, credited as produced by Ungar and the band.[3] On that album it is heard near the start and again in the final track, where it is paired with a reading of Sullivan Ballou’s letter to his wife.[3] Ballou, a Union major, was killed at the first Battle of Bull Run a week after writing the letter, which actor Paul Roebling reads at the close of the series’ first episode.[4] The soundtrack won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album.[3][5]

Ungar and Mason have long grown used to listeners assuming the waltz is centuries old, a mistake they take as flattering.[6] In 2006 they learned that SUNY New Paltz was close to selling the camp’s site, the Ashokan Field Campus, and together with longtime campers they formed a nonprofit, the Ashokan Foundation, to save it.[7] A 2022 Library of Congress profile describes the couple as heading the Ashokan Center,[8] which still hosts Music & Dance Camps.[9]

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Sources

  1. Watershed Post: "How Jay Ungar wrote 'Ashokan Farewell'".
  2. All Classical Portland: "Ashokan Farewell".
  3. Nonesuch Records: "The Civil War [Soundtrack]".
  4. NPR, Talk of the Nation: "On Bull Run Anniversary, Maj. Ballou's Letter".
  5. Recording Academy (GRAMMY.com): "Ken Burns".
  6. JTA, Jewniverse: "The Jew Behind the Famous Civil War Lament".
  7. Jay Ungar & Molly Mason: "Jay Ungar & Molly Mason".
  8. Library of Congress, Folklife Today: "Homegrown Plus: Jay Ungar and Molly Mason".
  9. The Ashokan Center: "About Us".