"Ashokan Farewell" was composed by Jay Ungar in 1982. It has served as a goodnight
or farewell waltz at the annual Ashokan Fiddle & Dance Camps run by Ungar and
his wife Molly Mason at the Ashokan Field Campus of SUNY New Paltz (now the Ashokan Center)
in upstate New York.
The tune was later used as the title theme of the 1990 PBS television miniseries The Civil War, as well as the 1991 compilation album Songs of the Civil War. I learned it first from the TV show and then from sheet music. It is in our Monday night jam list. |