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Today, there is a huge variety of solos for tubists to play, but these all seem to originate in the last 60 years.

Does anyone know what music tubists played to demonstrate their ability in earlier years?

Did the bass players of Sousa's band ever play solos, or is their reputation based purely on ensemble playing?

Most of the pre-1950's solos for tuba were theme and variation form (e.g. Carnival of Venice). Often a solo which was written and transcribed for all brass instruments including tuba; there were very few original works for tuba. Transcriptions played a part but were not published as often.

Hale A. Vandercook (the flower and the gemstone series), Gower-Voxman, Bill Bell (allegedly ghost-written) were among the people publishing solos. Steve Shoop has recently re-published the early Fred Geib solos but I have only seen one Geib piece, it was not theme and variations type, "Cavatina."

A solo that wasn't theme and variation was hard to find, an example is by a fairly well known composer, Leo Sowerby, Chaconne(?). The Hindemith Sonata for tuba was arguably the first contemporary solo published by a major composer for tuba.

While neither the Hindemith Sonata (about '54) or the V-W Concerto (about '55) are considered among their best works, the very fact that these were the first pieces written by major composers for our instrument add to their value.

This is an interesting topic. I am currently working on an article about early tuba solos. My initial focus is on 10 solos that were composed for tuba with both band accompaniment AND piano accompaniment. They are the theme-and-variations type in the same mold as Herbert Clarke cornet solos. The most well-known is Beelzebub. Most of these pieces have been out-of-print for years. In the Tuba Source Book (page 115) Skip Gray presents an excellent (yet brief) little history of this literature. The collection of Geib solos that I have published were obtained from the Geib family and had never been published (except one). Mr. Geib DID publish several others. I am working to obtain copyright permission and expect to make these available soon, as well. One of his tuba solos- Melody, Op. 9, is still published by Carl Fischer.