Editing Pedal keyboard (section)

===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.<ref>Encyclopædia Britannica. "Pedal point"</ref> These earliest pedals were wooden stubs nicknamed ''mushrooms'',<ref name=autogenerated1>The Organ: An Encyclopedia. Douglas Earl Rush and Richard Kassel</ref><ref>While the term "mushroom" may seem unusual to English speakers, in French, the term "champignon" (mushroom) also refers to pedals, such as the accelerator pedal in a car.</ref> 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".

[[File:ShortOctaveOnC.svg|thumb|left|150 px|A diagram of one type of "short octave" as used on a manual keyboard; while this exact layout was not used on pedalboards, it shows the different note layouts that were used on some instruments]]

There were two approaches used for the [[accidental (music)|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.<ref name=autogenerated1 /> 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{{music|sharp}}, D{{music|sharp}}, F{{music|sharp}}, G{{music|sharp}}, and A{{music|sharp}}.<ref name=autogenerated1 /> The 17th-century north German organ builder [[Arp Schnitger]] used an F{{music|sharp}} and G{{music|sharp}} in the lowest octave of the manuals and pedal keyboards, but not a C{{music|sharp}} and D{{music|sharp}}. 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. 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.