57: Pedals on the Organ
One cannot possibly understand the organ looking only at the keyboard(s). If that’s all you see or understand, you’re looking at a funny-sounding piano— and you’d get very, very far playing it like one. But an organ is much, much more than that. And a significant part of what’s missing is hidden far below, where most people never bother to look. There, a secret is hidden: a whole other keyboard to be played with the feet of the organist, which is responsible for so many key concepts in harmonic analysis.
Here, we have the first phrase of Bach’s BWV 556— his little Prelude in F, written for organ. Notice the 3 staves bracketed together rather than the typical 2 you’d see for a piano, harpsichord, or almost any other keyboard.
Here, we have the first phrase of Bach’s BWV 556— his little Prelude in F, written for organ. Notice the 3 staves bracketed together rather than the typical 2 you’d see for a piano, harpsichord, or almost any other keyboard.
The treble staff, as usual, is played by the right hand, and the bass staff in the bracket is played by the left; but there remains a third (bass) staff still unaccounted for. This, indeed, is the pedal staff.
At least in the case of the F major prelude, it’s far simpler than the other two— which for a while play a melody in imitation, then switch to broken chords more or less at a 3:1 augmentation in the left hand versus the right, before coming back together for a pretty standard cadence. This third staff, meanwhile, almost always only has a single quarter note which lasts the majority of the bar. This third staff— here, deceptively simple— is for the pedals: the extra keyboard played by the feet.
There is lots of debate among proper organists about how this line and many others should be played— all with the heel of one foot? All with the toe? Alternating heel-toe of the same foot? Alternating toes only, but both feet? Alternating heel-toe and both feet?— and an actual organist could give you the pros and cons of each of these methods much more effectively than I could, seeing that I’ve never once sat at an organ console.
Simple as it may be in this case— and believe me, this is an outlier—the pedal line has an incredibly important job: grounding us in whatever our harmonic language is by providing the lowest line.
This has two advantages. One is widely recognized— that it frees up the hands so that complex passages are at least possible, which would not have been the case had some notes in the hands not beed delegated to the feet. Another, less so, but I think it’s even more important. Benjamin Zander of the Boston Philharmonic says that players who sit when they play should be “one buttock players”— that is, that they should be so free to move around, as much as they feel they should, and as much as is safe, such that, most of the time, only one of their two glutes is in contact with the chair on which they are sitting because they have so thoroughly engaged with the music that they have, in a sense, let it take over their bodies and decide how this expressive movement happens. None of this is rehearsed. It cannot be learned. It can’t be dogmatic. It just should absolutely happen, but according to how each person, uniquely, understands and connects with the music. The often-overlooked benefit of the pedals of the organ— again, effectively an extra keyboard played with the feet, which do far more work across a far wider space than a pianist’s 1, 2, or 3 pedals — is that, to reach the pedals and to physically be capable of playing some pedal parts, one must necessarily become a Zander “one-buttock player.”
This movement of the body does not remain exclusively out of pure necessity to reach the pedals for long; though that sometimes remain a cause of this movement for the entire time someone learns and performs a work, most of the time, hopefully, this movement becomes a function of that emotional expression and connection with the audience. And a tremendous part of the emotional depth (not to mention literal musical depth, as in “very low notes”) of the organ writ large comes from the pedals.
At least in the case of the F major prelude, it’s far simpler than the other two— which for a while play a melody in imitation, then switch to broken chords more or less at a 3:1 augmentation in the left hand versus the right, before coming back together for a pretty standard cadence. This third staff, meanwhile, almost always only has a single quarter note which lasts the majority of the bar. This third staff— here, deceptively simple— is for the pedals: the extra keyboard played by the feet.
There is lots of debate among proper organists about how this line and many others should be played— all with the heel of one foot? All with the toe? Alternating heel-toe of the same foot? Alternating toes only, but both feet? Alternating heel-toe and both feet?— and an actual organist could give you the pros and cons of each of these methods much more effectively than I could, seeing that I’ve never once sat at an organ console.
Simple as it may be in this case— and believe me, this is an outlier—the pedal line has an incredibly important job: grounding us in whatever our harmonic language is by providing the lowest line.
This has two advantages. One is widely recognized— that it frees up the hands so that complex passages are at least possible, which would not have been the case had some notes in the hands not beed delegated to the feet. Another, less so, but I think it’s even more important. Benjamin Zander of the Boston Philharmonic says that players who sit when they play should be “one buttock players”— that is, that they should be so free to move around, as much as they feel they should, and as much as is safe, such that, most of the time, only one of their two glutes is in contact with the chair on which they are sitting because they have so thoroughly engaged with the music that they have, in a sense, let it take over their bodies and decide how this expressive movement happens. None of this is rehearsed. It cannot be learned. It can’t be dogmatic. It just should absolutely happen, but according to how each person, uniquely, understands and connects with the music. The often-overlooked benefit of the pedals of the organ— again, effectively an extra keyboard played with the feet, which do far more work across a far wider space than a pianist’s 1, 2, or 3 pedals — is that, to reach the pedals and to physically be capable of playing some pedal parts, one must necessarily become a Zander “one-buttock player.”
This movement of the body does not remain exclusively out of pure necessity to reach the pedals for long; though that sometimes remain a cause of this movement for the entire time someone learns and performs a work, most of the time, hopefully, this movement becomes a function of that emotional expression and connection with the audience. And a tremendous part of the emotional depth (not to mention literal musical depth, as in “very low notes”) of the organ writ large comes from the pedals.
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