I’ve been following Michael Johnston of @michaelsmusic on Twitter for a while, and I had to share a recent tweet about his reprint of Dramatic Pedal Studies by Hamilton Crawford Macdougall (1858-1945) in which the parts given to the feet are either well-defined melodies or at least have some melodic interest. They will therefore stimulate the players’ interest in pedal playing, and through the assignment to the feet of those climacteric and dramatic passages usually (and quite naturally) given to the hands, give the player a grip of the pedals not otherwise obtainable says Macdougall. Quite right – see sample above.
This is a reprint of the 1922 Schirmer edition, and is something they specialise in at Michael’s Music Service – cleaning up and re-issuing organ music to make it available again, often for the first time in decades.
Browse their catalogue of restored organ music here.
More here if you are interested in their take on music restoration, and the proliferation of pdf downloads on the internet.
Michael’s Music Service is based in North Carolina in the US, but they ship by air to other countries.
Excerpt from Macdougall Dramatic Pedal Studies (above)/Michael Johnston
