HOMAS SHINDLER,
_Registrar_.

The radiating and concave board has been adopted by the American Guild
of Organists and has long been considered the standard for the best
organs built in the United States and Canada. It is self-evident that
this board is more expensive to construct than the other. That is why
we do not find it in low-priced organs.

In most American organs built twenty years ago, the compass of the
pedal board was only two octaves and two notes, from CCC to D.
Sometimes two octaves only. Later it was extended to F, 30 notes,
which is the compass generally found in England. Following Hope-Jones'
lead, all the best builders have now extended their boards to g, 32
notes, this range being called for by some of Bach's organ music and
certain pieces of the French school where a melody is played by the
right foot and the bass by the left. The chief reason is that g is the
top note of the string bass, and is called for in orchestral
transcriptions. Henry Willis & Sons have also extended the pedal
compass to g in rebuilding the St. George's Hall organ in 1898.

PEDAL STOP CONTROL.

For a long time no means whatever of controlling the Pedal stops and
couplers was provided, but in course of time it became the fashion to
cause the combination pedals or pistons on the Great organ (and
subsequently on the other departments also) to move the Pedal stops and
couplers so as to provide a bass suited to the particular combination
of stops in use on the manual. This was a crude arrangement and often
proved more of a hindrance than of a help to the player.
Unfortunately, unprogressive builders are still adhering to this
inartistic plan. It frequently leads to a player upsetting his Pedal
combination when he has no desire to do so. It becomes impossible to
use the combination pedals without disturbing the stops and couplers of
the Pedal department.

The great English organist, W. T. Best, in speaking of this, instanced
a well-known organ piece, Rinck's "Flute Concerto," which called for
quick changes from the Swell to the Great organ and _vice versa_, and
said that he knew of no instrument in existence on which it could be
properly played. An attempt had been made on the Continent to overcome
this difficulty by the use of two pedal-boards, placed at an angle to
each other, but it did not meet with success.

The Hope-Jones plan (patented 1889) of providing the combination pedals
or pistons with a doubl