i first heard "ashokan farewell" last year*; the senior orchestra students played it as the final piece in the spring concert with each kid taking a little part as a solo. i cried more than one tear. tonight at baccalaureate one senior - a talented violinist who is going to major in music in college - played it.
this senior class graduates tomorrow. am i tired of them - am i glad they are going out into the world they are so desperate to experience? YES. but i will miss them more than i anticipated, and that's always how it works - all of a sudden graduation is upon you and the reality hits that these good kids - these special human beings - are leaving. i've gone from "i'm so glad this is the last day of class" to "um...please don't leave." i hate goodbyes. but we're in goodbye season.
and this song gets me every time.
*but really i first heard the song on the ken burns series the civil war, and that might be where you've heard it, too.
Query: does music itself create emotional response, or do memories of the setting in which it is first heard cause the response? In particular: is it just the association with the Ken Burns film that makes Ashokan Farewell so powerful, or the music itself? Probably both, and the brilliance of Ken Burns was perfectly combining the power of the music with the evocative subject matter of the film. For lovers of trivia: Ashokan is a music camp (similar to Swannanoa Gathering) in upstate New York. For the final performance at the camp one summer, the music director, Jay Ungar, composed Ashokan Farewell.
ReplyDeleteAshokan Farewell is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever, ever, EVER.
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