(Fr. genouillère; Ger. Kniehebel).
Any of a variety of devices moving either horizontally or vertically, operated by the knee, and used for the production of expressive or timbre-altering effects on a number of different types of keyboard instruments. A knee-lever was occasionally provided on reed organs to permit control of loudness, since the feet were already occupied with the pedal-operated bellows. Knee-levers preceded pedals for operating damper-lifting and other mechanisms on German and Austrian pianos, and they were also used to activate the elaborate register-changing devices found on late 18th-century French harpsichords.
See also Pedal.
EDWIN M. RIPIN