Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 2.djvu/693

PEDAL POINT. and Dominant can be Pedals. The famous passage in the 'Eroica' Symphony

may be thought exquisite by some, and a mere blunder by others, but it is not a Pedal, or anything else that Harmony has a name for. But what then is to be said for the following extraordinary passage in Grieg's song 'Ausfahrt'?

Is the D♭ here a Pedal? If so, the passage might be cited as a possible quadruple Pedal, for B♭ and a low A♭ might be added to the bass without bad effect. The true explanation—namely, that here we have no pedal at all, but a melody in double notes moving against one continued harmony—will hardly be accepted by every one, and the passage must stand as a remarkable exception to rule.

Beginning with Schumann we find that modern composers have all striven to invent new Pedal effects by breaking one or other of the three governing laws. In Schumann's 'Humoreske' occurs the following typical passage—

where, on a sustained F we modulate from B♭ into C minor, D minor, E minor, and F major, successively. Schumann frequently on a Tonic Pedal modulates into the relative minor, as in the Trio of the Scherzo in the E♭ Symphony, etc.; but such harmony being open to another explanation than 'pedal' the law remains in force. Raff goes still farther. In the slow movement of his Spring Symphony he modulates through numerous keys for a space of 40 bars, always contriving that a high G may be sounded on the first beat of each bar with some bearable degree of concord. Again, the following passage from the last movement of the same composer's Forest Symphony—

which is so far a pedal passage—he repeats in B♭, D♭, and G, still with the F in the bass, producing an effect which is certainly novel, if nothing else.

The only point remaining to be noticed is that our 3rd rule, forbidding motion to or from the pedal note when it does not form part of the harmony, has been occasionally violated without unpleasing effect. In Hiller's F♯ minor Piano Concerto, the following occurs on each repetition of the main subject

Spohr has used the Pedal perhaps with greater frequency than any composer, but his mode of treatment is invariable and calls for no notice.

Songs and short pieces have been occasionally written entirely on a Pedal bass; and the longest Pedal extant is perhaps the introduction to Wagner's opera 'Das Rheingold.' [ F. C. ]

PEDALS (from pes, pedis, a foot). Certain appliances in the Organ, Pianoforte, and Harp, worked by the feet.

I. In the Organ they are keys, sounding notes, and played by the feet instead of the hands; and the is the whole breadth or range of such keys. When pedals were first applied to English organs—towards the end of the last century—they were made (in the words of an old treatise) to 'drag down' the manual keys; and the lowest pedal was always placed exactly below the lowest manual key. And as, in the organs of the time, the manuals of one would descend to GG with short octaves, of a second to the same note with long octaves, of a third to FFF, of a fourth to CCC, while those of a fifth would stop at the orthodox CC key; and as one organ would have an octave of pedals, a second an octave and a half, and a third two, it was quite possible to go to half a dozen organs in succession without finding any two with the pedals alike, either in position or approach towards efficiency. The earliest specimens, too, were toe-pedals, like those at Halberstadt [ page 582, fig. 12 ]; but after a time