Useful Clarinet Solos contains eleven pieces by various composers.
Graham Lyons writes… “The purpose is to provide clarinet players, who are in their early stages, with pieces they will enjoy working on and playing. Whatever the original source of the piece, my intention has been to turn it into a convincing clarinet piece. Sometimes I have had to arrange and adapt the music quite radically: the great composers unfortunately did not choose to write their most inspired music in the form of short pieces for clarinet and piano!

Converting great music into pieces that sound right in their new context and that suit both the instrument and the player of moderate ability, gives rise to many challenges. In my attempts at fulfilling them, I am certain to have offended some purists. However, I am equally certain that a literal transcription of the composer’s notes would in most cases be a travesty of the composer’s intentions — just as a literal translation of a poem into another language destroys its essence.

Once a clarinet player can play sustained musical phrases and is familiar with a moderate range of notes, he or she will be able to play the easier pieces in this books. Altogether, Useful Clarinet Solos will provide the average player with two or three years study and playing material. Every piece here has been selected and arranged with extreme care. There is no dead wood.

The Clarinet parts hold the main interest and will make sense to the player by themselves. The notes range from low F sharp to high C, and are in keys with no more than two sharps or flats.

The piano parts, I hope, do more than just accompany. With them I have attempted to create the feeling given by the music in its original context. The parts are mostly simply written, but they do require accurate and sympathetic playing.”
About the composer:
Graham Lyons started the piano at the age of six but at thirteen, inspired by Benny Goodman, switched to clarinet lessons. He continued to play the piano, but without formal tuition, using it to investigate harmony and jazz improvisation. His first clarinet teacher was George Draper, whom he remembered with great affection. For five years his weekly high spot was his clarinet lesson. After National Service as a Radar Fitter, Graham went to Oxford to read physics. At Oxford, music, not physics, took priority and, not surprisingly, he was sent down at the end of the first year. After Oxford he studied bassoon and composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, paying his way by working in a jazz club on piano, clarinet and saxophone.

For the next twenty years Graham worked as a performer in symphony orchestras, musicals, clubs and on broadcasts. He also composed advertising jingles and television background music, and arranged for bands, cabaret and various (now defunct) BBC Radio orchestras. In addition he also taught woodwind instruments part-time in schools. In fact he is best-known for his educational publications, comprising more than sixty tutors and albums, with combined sales of more than 300,000. Many of his compositions are on the wind syllabuses of the music examining boards.