Pedal Exercises
Let me start this topic, with a short account of the development of Organ Pedals.
A pedalboard is a keyboard played with the feet that is usually used to produce the low-pitched bass line of a piece of music. It normally has long, narrow lever-style keys laid out in the same semitone scalar pattern as a manual keyboard, with longer keys for C, D, E, F, G, A and B, and shorter, higher keys for C♯, D♯, F♯, G♯ and A♯.
Pedalboards are found at the base of the console of most pipe, theatre and electronic organs.
The first use of pedals on a pipe organ grew out of the need to hold bass drone notes, to support the polyphonic musical styles that predominated in the Renaissance Era.
Indeed, the term pedal point, which refers to a prolonged bass tone under changing upper harmonies, derives from the use of the organ pedalboard to hold sustained bass notes. These earliest pedals were wooden stubs nicknamed mushrooms, which were placed at the height of the feet. These pedals, which used simple pull-downs connected directly to the manual keys, are found in organs dating from the 13th century. The pedals on French organs were composed of short stubs of wood projecting out of the floor, which were mounted in pedalboards that could be either flat or tilted. Organists were unable to play anything but simple bass lines or slow-moving plainsong melodies on these short stub-type pedals.
There were two approaches used for the accidental notes (colloquially referred to as the "black" notes). The first approach can be seen in the 1361 Halberstadt organ, which uses shorter black keys placed above the white keys. Other organs positioned the black keys on the same level and depth as the white keys.
The first pedal keyboards only had three or four notes. Eventually, organ designers augmented this range by using eight notes, an approach now called a "short octave" keyboard, because it does not include accidental notes such as C♯, D♯, F♯, G♯, and A♯. The 17th-century north German organ builder Arp Schnitger used an F♯ and G♯ in the lowest octave of the manuals and pedal keyboards, but not a C♯ and D♯. From the 16th to 18th centuries, short octave keyboards were also used in the lowest octave of upper manual keyboards.
By the 14th century, organ designers were building separate windchests for the pedal division, to supply the pipes with the large amount of wind that bass notes need to speak, because these pipes were much larger. These windchests were often built into tall structures called "organ towers". Until the 15th century, most pedal keyboards only triggered the existing Hauptwerk pipes already used by the upper manual keyboards. Beginning in the 15th century, some organ designers began giving pedal keyboards their own set of pipes and stops. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the pedal division usually consisted of a few 8′ ranks and a single 16′ rank. By the early 17th century, pedal divisions became more complex, with a richer variety of pipes and tones. Nevertheless, the pedal division was usually inconsistent from one country to another.
By the beginning of the 17th century, organ designers began to give pedalboards on big organs a larger range, encompassing twenty-eight to thirty notes. As well, German organ designers began to use longer, narrower pedals, with a wider space between the pedals. By this point, most pedals were given a smoother lever-action by including a fulcrum at the back of each pedal. These design changes allowed performers to play more complex, fast-moving pedal lines. This gave rise to the dramatic pedal solos found in German organ works from composers from the Lutheran Organ School, such as J.S. Bach. In Bach's organ music the cantus firmus melody, which is usually a hymn tune, is often performed in the pedal, using a reed stop to make it stand out.
Several other sources claim that the pedalboard design improvements of the 17th century allowed the organist to actuate the pedals either with the toe of the foot or with the heel. However, it is reckoned that in Bach's day toe and heel pedalling was not yet known, as is evident from his organ works, in which all the pedal parts can be played with the toe. Interestingly, what evolved as "German" pedal technique in the late 18th and early 19th century promoted heel-and-toe pedaling, while the "French" style was predicated on "toe only" pedal technique.
In the 17th and 18th century, pedalboards were rare in England. A critic for the New York Times in 1895 argued that this may explain why Handel's published organ works are generally lighter-sounding than those of J.S. Bach. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the pedal part of organ music was rarely given its own staff. Instead, the organ part would be put into two staves, which were mostly used for the upper and lower manual parts. When the composer wanted a part played with the pedal keyboard, they marked Pedal, Ped., or simply P.
Often, composers omitted these signs, and the player had to decide if the range of all the parts or the lowest part was appropriate for the pedal keyboard.
In the late 1820s, the pedalboard was still fairly unfamiliar in the UK.
In the organ at the Church of St James at Bermondsey in 1829, "a finger [or manual] keyboard was added for those unable to play with their feet." If an organist was performing a piece with a pedal part, an assistant was needed to play the bottom line of the finger keyboard, offset on the bass side of the console.
In 1855 in England, Henry Willis patented a concave design for the pedalboard that also radiated the keyboard outward toward the organ thus bringing the keys closer together, under the feet of the performer. This design became common in the UK and in the US in the late 19th century, and by 1903, the American Guild of Organists (AGO) adopted it as their standard.
In the 19th century and early 20th century, the pedal division itself also underwent changes. The pedal divisions of the Baroque era often included a small number of higher-pitched stops, which allowed performers to perform higher melodies on the pedalboard. In the 19th century and early 20th century, organ designers omitted most of these higher-pitched stops, and used pedal divisions which were dominated by 8′ and 16′ stops. This design change, which coincided with the musical trend for music with a deep, rich bass part, meant that players used the pedalboard mainly for bass parts.
By the mid-19th century, the pedal part of organ music was increasingly given its own staff, which meant that composers and transcribers began writing organ music in three-stave systems (upper manual, lower manual, and pedal keyboard). Whereas early organ composers left the way that pedal keyboard lines were played to the player's discretion, in the later 19th century, composers began to indicate specific foot actions.
In addition to telling the organist whether to use the left or right foot, symbols indicate whether they should use the toe or heel. A "^" symbol indicates the toe, and a "u" or "o" indicates the heel. Symbols below notes indicate the left foot, and above notes indicates the right foot.
In the 1990s, standalone electronic MIDI controller pedalboards became widely available on the market. MIDI pedalboards do not produce any tones by themselves, and so they must be connected to a MIDI-compatible electronic keyboard or MIDI sound module and an amplified loudspeaker to produce musical tones.
The feature that identifies the organ is its pedalboard, which effectively gives the player an extra keyboard.
It, therefore, seems a pity that we have this facility on our Yamaha AR organs, but some do not use them, or if they do so, only occasionally.
My intention in this Pearl is to encourage us all to use the pedals regularly, and for those who do so, to improve their skill and accuracy
Peter
