A keyboard played by the feet, chiefly to be found in organs, but also in carillons, harpsichords, clavichords and pianos. It can be connected either to its own pipes (bells, strings) or to the manual keyboard(s) of the same instrument. Early types are for playing with the toes: short sticks protruding from the lower case-front either as simple strips of wood (Halberstadt, c1361) or as proto-keys (Norrlanda, c1370), small rectangular frames with short straight keys (16th-century Flanders and Italy), the same with longer keys but still for toe-pedalling (16th-century Netherlands and Germany), round or square studs into which the toe or ball of the foot presses (Iberian organs, 17th–18th centuries), flat, shallow, rectangular boxes through the upper board of which pass short separated pedal keys (France and Belgium, 18th century). Eventually, longer and thicker pedals designed for occasional playing with the heel were developed (18th-century Netherlands and Germany); these were called ‘German pedals’ in English sources from about 1810.
Romantic and modern organs have seen a great variety of pedal-board compasses (up to 32 notes,C–g', in large Anglo-American organs) and styles (with concave, parallel or radiating forms, or combinations of these). Large Italian and German 19th-century organs possessed ‘double’ pedal-boards, the upper being placed at an angle to the lower. See also Pedal.
PETER WILLIAMS/MARTIN RENSHAW