Pedal keyboard

13th century to 16th century 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. 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 to 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. Organist E. Power Biggs, in the liner notes for his album Organs of Spain noted that "One can learn to play them, but fluent pedal work is impossible". 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. What evolved as the "German" pedal technique in the late 18th and early 19th century promoted heel-and-toe pedaling, while the "French" style was predicated on the "toe only" pedal technique. In the 17th and 18th centuries, 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 player had to decide if the range of all the parts or the lowest part was appropriate for the pedal keyboard. This lack of specification is in keeping with many other aspects of Baroque musical performance practice, such as the use of improvised chords by organists and harpsichord players in the figured bass tradition and the use of improvised ornaments by solo singers and instrumentalists. 19th century to 20th century 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 [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 ends keyboard outward and used longer keys, bringing the end keys closer to 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 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 (right hand, left hand, 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. Swedish organist L. Nilson published a method for the pedal keyboard, the English translation of which was titled A System of Technical Studies in Pedal Playing for the Organ (Schirmer, 1904). Nilson lamented that it "...is a melancholy fact that only very few eminent organists since Bach's time have made it their business to lift pedal-playing out of its primitive confusion..." (page 1 of Preface). He argued that the great organ pedagogues such as Kittel and Abbe Vogler did not make any efforts to improve the "...system of playing on the pedals". Nilson makes one exception from this critique: the organ method of J. Lemmens, who he praises as having reformed pedal playing by introducing "...sound principles of execution" (page 2 of Preface). Nilson's pedal method includes scale and arpeggio studies, polyphonic studies with both feet playing in contrary motion, studies written in parallel octaves, and studies written in thirds. 1990s–2000s 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. In the 1990s and 21st century, some churches began using electronic-trigger equipped pedalboards for the 16′ and 32′ stops, because electronic synthesizer bass tones, amplifier, and subwoofer speakers are less expensive than wooden or metal wind-driven pipes. The MIDI information from the electronic pedalboard sensors triggers pipe organ sounds from digital sound modules (e.g., Wicks CM-100, Ahlborn Archive Modules, or Walker Technical sound generation), which are then amplified through loudspeakers. These MIDI systems can be much less expensive than metal or wooden bass pipes, which are very costly to purchase and install, due to their heavy weight (up to one ton per pipe), large size, and need for large amounts of wind. Another rationale for using MIDI systems is that it may be easier to get a focused sound with a MIDI system, because all of the bass tone emanates from a single speaker or set of speakers. With traditional pipes, it can be difficult to give the pedal division a focused sound, because the large pipes tend to be spread out over the entire organ pipe chest. This cost-saving measure has been the subject of controversy in the organ scene. Advocates of MIDI pedal divisions argue that a good quality MIDI system produces a better tone than an inexpensive set of bass pipes with money-saving "shortcuts" such as using stopped pipes and resultant tones to reduce the number of required pipes. However, critics dislike the way that the use of MIDI pedal divisions blends electronically amplified lower voices with the natural, wind-driven upper ranks. Willi Apel and Peter Williams argue that by definition, an organ must make its sound by air flowing through pipes. Some critics argue that the bass tone from a MIDI pedal division, which comes from an amplified 12-inch subwoofer, is not as "natural" and "open-sounding" as the vibrations from a massive, wind-driven 32-foot pipe. ==Design==