Folk Alley Sessions: Jay Ungar & Molly Mason Family Band, "Ashokan Farew...

I'm not sure why this crossed my mind today but this is just a beautiful piece of music.

I first heard "Ashokan Farewell" on the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War when it came out back in the early '90's.
There are several versions on the soundtrack - totally worth the purchase.

Fantastic music and one of the most heartbreaking and stirring letters ever written - from a young soldier going into battle to his wife back home.

If you don't cry a little when you hear the words written by Major Sullivan Ballou just before he died at the first battle of Bull Run in 1861 you're probably already dead inside.


http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/war/ballou_letter.html



From Wikipedia:

Ashokan Farewell:

The piece is a waltz in D major, composed by Jay Ungar in the style of a Scottish lament (e.g., Niel Gow's "Lament for his second wife"). The most famous arrangement of the piece begins with a solo violin, later accompanied by guitar and upright bass.
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 his wife, Molly Mason, who gave the tune its name. It has served as a goodnight or farewell waltz at the annual Ashokan Music & Dance Camps [1] that Ungar and Mason run at the Ashokan Center [2] in the Catskill Mountains of New York.[2]
The tune was also used on the TV series The Twilight Zone in 1986, in an episode titled "Shadow Play", about a death-row inmate who claimed that reality was but a figment of his never-ending nightmare.
Ashokan was the name of a Catskill Region village[2] that is now mostly covered by the Ashokan Reservoir.