Donald Patrick Sargent a Celebration of 70 Years Of

Donald Patrick Sargent A celebration of 70 years of composing – by Geoff Hore Donald Patrick Sargent 2013 ‘Composing is the easiest thing in the world, if you can do it. Pipe Major Donald MacLeod’ THE FIRST ARTICLE in this series about New Zealand Composers of Bagpipe Music was published in the New Zealand Pipe Band magazine August 2001 and the composer who featured was Donald Patrick Sargent. The article coincided with the publication of The Muckle Dram Collection that contained 95 of Donald’s tunes. Since that milestone in New Zealand bagpipe music publishing history, he has continued composing and recently a number of significant events have occurred that warrants the retelling of his life story as well as updating recent developments. Donald Patrick Sargent was born in Dannevirke, a small provincial town in the lower part of the North Island of New Zealand on 11 July 1925. He was the youngest of five children by nine years and had three brothers and a sister. During his childhood he lived at Matamau, a country district a few miles north of Dannevirke where his parents had a small farm. His father was New Zealand born with parents from Lincolnshire in England, whilst his mother’s family came from Tipperary in Ireland. Oddly enough it was his father who had a passionate fondness for the music of the Highland Bagpipe and saw to it that Donald was taught the pipes at 10 years of age. His first teacher was George Rose who was a member of the Ruahine Highland Pipe Band. George used to call at the farm on his way to band practice at the Matamau country hall. Later Donald joined the main group for chanter practice. He had a natural talent for music and could play the mouth organ, tin whistle and melodeon before he started on the pipes. The neighbours used to say, ‘Young Sargent could get a tune out of a seven-wire fence.’ When Donald was 11 the family sold the farm and moved to Dannevirke where he attended the local High School. In 1939 a pipe band was formed at the school of which he became the Pipe Major. The following year the Ruahine Band won the New Zealand Championship for the first time. At the conclusion of his secondary schooling, Donald moved to Wellington and there he met Bruce McCann who became his tutor for three years and friend for life. He always maintained ‘McCann was a good piper but a great teacher’. He learned a piobaireachd or two from Bruce McCann but after he returned to Dannevirke there was no source of tuition available, so he concentrated on small music, both band and solo. It was during this time that he started composing and has continued up to the present time. In 1946 Donald played with the Ruahine Band and later became Musical Director of the Dannevirke and District Pipe Band and in 1953 they won the New Zealand B Grade Championships. Later the Band competed strongly in A Grade until 1960 when loss of members forced it to retire from competition. In 1961 Donald was appointed to the New Zealand Pipe Band Association’s Panel of Judges on which he served for 27 years until his retirement in 1988. He was also in demand as a solo judge and retired from that panel in 1996. Throughout his personal life he was involved in accountancy and secretarial work; the last 21 years of his working life were as secretary to the Woodville-Pahiatua Racing Club based in Woodville. Donald spent a couple of years in Ireland in the 1950s and has been back twice on holiday to Scotland and Ireland in 1992 and 1998, both times in the company of his old crony Willie Anderson. Donald was married in 1959 and had three children, Ewan, Terry and Margaret. Terry died accidentally in 1982 at the age of 18 and wife Mary passed away in January 1993. All his family are remembered in the tunes that bear their names. Donald lived in Woodville for 51 years where his main interest, apart from piping and pipe music, was in holistic healing work. In 2006 he moved from Woodville, over the Ruahine Ranges to Ashhurst, a small town closer to Palmerston North and is still actively involved in holistic healing. Donald is now 88 years old and although generally in good health his eyesight is failing. In 2006 he could no longer accurately record the tunes in manuscript so purchased a computer and installed the bagpipe music-writing programme Electric Pipes by Andrew Baker of Auckland, New Zealand. He admits that without this, and assistance from Andrew, none of the tunes composed over the last seven years would have been recorded. Since then, the problem has worsened, and Donald has ‘hung up his 1 quill’ and ‘invited his Muse to find a new scribe’. There are many from the older generation who openly admit they have no desire to get involved with computers, but not Donald. He very quickly learned the basics and rapidly became quite deft at emailing, surfing the internet and setting up his newly composed tunes. He was not aware of the power and speed of converting files to pdf and still sent copies of tunes via 'snail mail'. However, once told about the availability of internet downloads he located a pdf programme, installed it, and then emailed his latest tune - all within the hour. In the eight years following the publication of the The Muckle Dram Collection in 2001 Donald composed 25 new tunes that were published in Cuth Selby’s Pipe Tunes by Valda & Ewen McCann in 2009. The following four years have probably been the most prolific of Donald’s 70 year composing marathon and a further 31 new tunes have appeared. Also, another five previously lost or forgotten tunes have surfaced. During the 1950s, 60s and 70s Donald was actively involved in the competition scene, as a soloist, in pipe bands and judging, and the desire to emulate compositions like those that had become the standard fare in these events was foremost in his mind. Most of the tunes in The Muckle Dram Collection are similar in style to the existing classics and often their quality is not too far away from the mark. As he got older Donald’s mood changed and over the last decade and a half many tunes have moved away from the heavy competition style to a more ‘user friendly’ means of creating good music. Pipers who wish to play simpler more melodic tunes at a ceilidh or for themselves will find many from the last 15 years that will appeal. Donald created a number of high-quality tunes in his early years, but many believe that all those from the last decade or so are amongst his best compositions. Interest has been expressed from within New Zealand and overseas for a reprint of the The Muckle Dram Collection but the cost of producing just a few copies would be uneconomical. However, by the end of 2012 there were so many new compositions it did seem that publishing a new book would be financially viable and to reprint the original book at the same time suddenly became a reality. The writer mulled over the logistics of producing two books but kept putting it off ‘until he had more time’. The prod came after the Waipu Highland Gathering on New Year’s Day 2013 when the writer was having a quiet dram with Allan Cameron and the subject of a new book was discussed. Allan, in his forthright manner, said ‘…you should get off your arse and do it!’ It took just overt six months but in August the The Muckle Dram Collection Books 1 & 2 were published. The content of The Muckle Dram Collection Book 1 has the same 95 tunes, but the book has undergone a few changes. It is now in portrait shape and the page layout has been altered. In the earlier landscape format, there were a number of six parted tunes that went onto two pages; each tune is now on one page. There were also some tunes at the end that were added at the final stages of production but in the new publication these have been included with other tunes of the same genre. The preliminary material has been retained except for the photographs and a new Preface has been added. The Frontispiece of Book 1 has a photograph of Donald at the early part of his composing career and Book 2 has a photograph taken in 2013. Both books have been formatted in accordance with the principals laid out in The Oxford Guide to Style by R M Ritter, published by Oxford University Press 2002. The Muckle Dram Collection Book 2 is a collection of 56 tunes composed since 2001 and a further five from earlier times that have only recently been discovered. One of the older tunes is a hornpipe composed for the flute in 1974 and is called Irish Hornpipe for Barbara. Anyone interested in listening to the tune can access it in the sound file at the bottom of the front page of the www.silverchanter.com website. It is a delightful tune but, alas, does not fit the Highland bagpipe scale. The first seven tunes are slow airs and laments. The Green Glade was composed in about 1950 and although intended to be played in the Test Selection it never was. In the mid 1950s a number of members of the Ruahine Pipe Band lived in very close proximity and they nicknamed the area ‘The Glen’.

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