Pedal Harpsichord.

Yes, Schumann owned a piano pedalier and composed for it.  Alkan also wrote a lot for the instrument, and Saint-Saens' Piano Concerto #2 was originally for pedal piano and the version played today is a transcription for traditional piano.  The instrument and compositions for it were common in the nineteenth century.

There are two types of pedal pianos, ones that share strings between the pedals and the "manual" and ones that have different strings for each.  The former are fairly common and are either uprights with an extra set of hammers down at the pedals or grands with an action that resembles and organ's tracker action to translate the pedal motion into a keystrike from the main action.  The other kind require two grand pianos, the Doppio Borgato is the only production version of that style, and there's one custom-made for Roberto Prosseda by Pinchi that can be jury-rigged to any two grands if the legs are removed from one of the instruments.  Erard continued to make uprights pedaliers for a number of years into the twentieth century, but the instrument hasn't really had any attention since then, but a renaissance of sorts has started in the past fifteen years.

The piano-pedalier was considered a concert instrument during the middle of the nineteenth-century, but it feel out of favor by the turn of the century.  It remained more of a presence in France because the French Organ schools would keep ordering them to allow students to practice their organ skills without needing a full instrument, but as electrical technical took over organs, the need subsided.

Both Roberto Presseda and Oliver Latry have produced recordings of original compositions for the instrument on modern and period instruments.  Latry's performances are on Alkan's personal Erard piano-pedalier which is on display in.  Alkan toured with the instrument in his later years.

The largest difference between a piano pedalboard and and an organ pedalboard is that you have to "kick" the notes instead of simply resting your foot on them because your controlling an action with velocity instead of an organ whose action is more binary.  A harpsichord with a pedalboard will operate more like an organ than a piano since it's plucking the string rather than striking one.

https://www.march.es/en/videos/?p0=5780
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4gySbWYGgA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDl-v_sD2uM
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/...o_0029.jpg

And here are some sources on harpsichords with pedalboards

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhEPMDQZ174
http://www.hubharp.com/musings_pedalharp.htm
https://www.baroquemusic.org/pedalharpsichord.html

There isn't as much on these, but I've done far more research into the piano-pedalier than the "harpsichord-pedalier."

I would love this as well, being a digital organ owner - but there is one huge problem if you are a Pianoteq (and not Organteq) user: as far as I know, there is no real way to specify multiple keyboards with the Harpsichord sets on Pianoteq. The options are simply too limited.

It is one of the biggest drawbacks for Pianoteq's harpsichords for me. With that said, I own the Ruckers Harpsichord set on Pianoteq and simply adore its sound. I have a Roland C-330 organ which is part of their "classical" series they made with their digital harpsichord. I primarily use it for harpsichord and purchased it for the 2 keyboard manuals and pedalboard, as well as the lovely tracker action touch - I did not purchase the Roland C-30 since it is a single manual harpsichord and therefore limited.

Normally I use Kontakt and some of the Edition Beurmann sample libraries, where it as simple as assigning each stop to a specific channel which can be treated as stops on my Roland Organ. For example, the 8' lower stop is assigned to my lower manual and activated by the stop toggle, the 8' upper is on my upper manual, the 4' is on my lower, and the pedals simple have the lower 8' stop an octave lower (pedal harpsichords usually worked by having cables or strings that would activate the keyboard - some supposedly had dedicated 16' strings).

With Pianoteq, however, it appears that no matter what stops you have activated on the Ruckers harpsichord, they all play with the understanding that there is only 1 keyboard. Maybe I've missed something in the settings, but Pianoteq does not have the same settings for multiple keyboard as Organteq does.

I love the Pianoteq Ruckers harpsichord - it works great on a single manual keyboard, though setting buttons to toggle the stops on and off from the organ could be easier to program, in my opinion. I had to make 2 separate midi events in Pianoteq - one to increase the toggle value, and the other to decrease the value.

I would try Organteq, but I have no idea if the Ruckers even works on it AND it costs 200 dollars.... That's a lot of money for 1 instrument when I have already purchased Pianoteq.

P.S. If you DO have a digital organ with a pedalboard and you want to turn the Ruckers into a pedal harpsichord, simply tell Pianoteq to receive MIDI inputs from OMNI (rather than a specific channel) and on your organ set the pedalboard to whatever octave range you require (usually 1 octave lower, depending on how your organ is setup).

I'm not sure if Pianoteq works like a VST in DAWs (such as Cantabile or Kontakt) - I don't think I've ever tried, but I imagine it does. That may be a possible workaround.

Still, an easier one would be for Pianoteq to transfer their MIDI options from Organteq to Pianoteq. It's better than the end-user jumping through a bunch of hoops. I really love the Pianoteq Ruckers sound - it's a real shame it doesn't work on a dual-manual MIDI setup.