“Ashokan Farewell”. Composed By: Jay Ungar. Played By: The Royal Marines Band.

“Ashokan Farewell”.

Played by: The Royal Marines Band.

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“Ashokan Farewell” is a piece of music composed by the American folk musician, Jay Ungar, in 1982. For many years it served as a goodnight or farewell waltz at the annual Ashokan Fiddle and 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.[1]

The tune was used as the title theme of the 1990 PBS Television Mini-Series “The Civil War”.[2] Despite its late date of composition, it was included in the 1991 compilation album Songs of The Civil War.

The composition, though written in 1982, has many similarities to the song “Massa’s In The Cold Cold Ground”, written in 1852 by Stephen C. Foster. It is unknown if this is the reason why it was included in Ken Burns’ Civil War series. The song itself was written nine years before the beginning of the U.S. Civil War and seems to presage it.