This is from Jay Ungar and Molly Mason's website: What was that "haunting" melody and where does it come from? The piece used as the theme music for The Civil War is called Ashokan Farewell. (Pronounced a-shó-kun or a-shó-kan). Ashokan Farewell was named for the Ashokan Field Campus of the State University of New York (in the Catskill Mountains). This camp, generally just called "Ashokan", is where Molly Mason and I run a series of week-long music and dance camps for adults known as Fiddle & Dance Workshop. Ashokan is the name of a town, most of which is now under the Ashokan Reservoir, a very beautiful and magical body of water that is across the road from our home. According to our local historian, Alf Evers, Ashokan first appears in print as a place name in 17th century Dutch records. He thinks that it may be a corruption of a local Indian word. I composed Ashokan Farewell in 1982 shortly after the summer programs had come to an end. I was experiencing a great feeling of loss and longing for the lifestyle and the community of people that had developed at Ashokan that summer. The transition from living in the woods with a small group of people who needed little excuse to celebrate the joy of living through music and dancing, back to life as usual, with traffic, disturbing newscasts, "important" telephone calls and impersonal relationships had been difficult. I was in tears when I wrote Ashokan Farewell . I kept the tune to myself for months, slightly embarrassed by the emotions that welled up whenever I played it. Ashokan Farewell is written in the style of a Scottish lament or Irish Air. I sometimes introduce it as, "a Scottish lament written by a Jewish guy from the Bronx." (I lived in the Bronx untiI the age of 16.) In 1983, our band, Fiddle Fever, was recording its second album, Waltz of the Wind. We needed another slow tune. We tried my yet unnamed lament. The arrangement came together in the studio very quickly with a beautiful guitar solo by Russ Barenberg, string parts by Evan Stover and plucked and bowed bass by Molly Mason. Molly suggested the title Ashokan Farewell. Film maker Ken Burns heard the album in 1984 and was very moved by this piece. He used a version played by Matt Glaser in the film, "Huey Long", and planned to use Ashokan Farewell as the theme for The Civil War. The original recording by Fiddle Fever is heard at the beginning of the series. This and other versions are used 25 times throughout the series including behind the reading of Sullivan Ballou's letter to his wife, for a surprising total of 59 minutes and 33 seconds of the 11 hour series. The members of Fiddle Fever (plus pianist Jacqueline Schwab, Jesse Carr and others) play much of the 19th century music heard throughout the soundtrack. Ashokan Farewell is the only contemporary tune that was used. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Karlyn Knaust Elia Ulster County Historian Saugerties, NY 12477