ABSTRACT
The composer and organist Samuel Wesley (1766–1837) lived at a transitional period in the history of English organs, organ music and organ playing: a time when, in three interlinked processes, organ builders were beginning to develop pedal boards, composers were learning how to write for them, and performers were learning how to play them. This chapter charts how these developments can be seen in Wesley’s own playing and in his published organ music. It shows that in his own playing Wesley made full use of the pedals, and actively sought out organs with pedals and pedal pipes to play, in a series of visits to London churches that can best be described as ‘organ tourism’. His writing for pedals in his published music was on the whole conservative, although it increased in its technical demands over time. In the two voluntaries dedicated to Thomas Adams, composed probably in 1826, however, there is far more extended and idiomatic writing for pedals, no doubt in consideration of Adams’s own abilities and reputation as a virtuoso pedallist.
