Organ Console - Keyboards

Keyboards

The organ is played with at least one keyboard, with configurations featuring from two to five keyboards being the most common. A keyboard to be played by the hands is called a manual (from the Latin manus, "hand"); an organ with four keyboards is said to have four manuals. Most organs also have a pedalboard, a large keyboard to be played by the feet.

The collection of ranks controlled by a particular manual is called a division. The names of the divisions of the organ vary geographically and stylistically. Common names for divisions are:

• Great, Swell, Choir, Solo, Orchestral, Echo, Antiphonal (America/England)
• Hauptwerk, Schwellwerk, Rückpositiv, Oberwerk, Brustwerk (Germany)
• Grand Choeur, Grand Orgue, Récit, Positif, Bombarde (France)
• Hoofdwerk, Rugwerk, Bovenwerk, Borstwerk, Zwelwerk (Holland)

Like the arrangement of stops, the keyboard divisions are also arranged in a common order. Taking the English names as an example, the main manual (the bottom manual on two-manual instruments or the middle manual on three-manual instruments) is traditionally called the Great, and the upper manual is called the Swell. If there is a third manual, it is usually the Choir and is placed below the Great. (The name "Choir" is a corruption of "Chair", as this division initially came from the practice of placing a smaller, self-contained, organ at the rear of the organist's bench. This is also why it is called a Positif which means portable organ.) If it is included, the Solo manual is usually placed above the Swell. Some larger organs contain an Echo or Antiphonal division, usually controlled by a manual placed above the Solo. German and American organs generally use the same configuration of manuals as English organs. On French instruments, the main manual (the Grand Orgue) is at the bottom, with the Positif and the Récit above it. If there are more manuals, the Bombarde is usually above the Récit and the Grand Choeur is below the Grand Orgue or above the Bombarde.

In addition to names, the manuals may be numbered with Roman numerals, starting from the bottom. Organists will frequently mark a part in their music with the number of the manual they intend to play it on, and this is sometimes seen in the original composition, typically in pieces written when organs were smaller and only had two or three manuals. It is also common to see super- and sub-couplers labeled as "II to I" (see Couplers below)

In some cases, an organ contains more divisions than it does manuals. In these cases, the extra divisions are called floating divisions and are played by coupling them to another manual. Usually this is the case with Echo/Antiphonal and Orchestral divisions, and sometimes it is seen with Solo and Bombarde divisions.

Although manuals are almost always horizontal, organs with five or more manuals may incline the uppermost manuals towards the organist to make them easier to reach.

Many new chamber organs and harpsichords today feature transposing keyboards, which can slide up or down one or more semitones. This allows these instruments to be played with Baroque instruments at a′=415 Hz, modern instruments at a′=440 Hz, or Renaissance instruments at a′=466 Hz. Modern organs are typically tuned in equal temperament, in which every semitone is 100 cents wide. Many organs that are built today following historical models are still tuned to historically-appropriate temperaments.

The range of the keyboards on an organ has varied widely between different time periods and different nationalities. Portativ organs may have a range of only an octave or two, while theatre organs may have manual keyboards the same size as that of a modern piano. German organs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries featured manual ranges from C to f′′′ and pedal ranges from C to d′, though some organs only had manual ranges that extended down to F. Many French organs of this period had pedal ranges that went down to AA (though this ravelement applied only to the reeds, and may have only included the low AA, not AA-sharp or BB). French organs of the nineteenth century typically had manual ranges from C to g′′′ and pedal ranges from C to f′; in the twentieth century the manual range was extended to a′′′. The modern console specification recommended by the American Guild of Organists calls for manual keyboards with sixty-one notes (five octaves, from C to c′′′′) and pedal keyboards with thirty-two notes (two and a half octaves, from C to g′). These ranges apply to the notes written on the page; depending on the registration, the actual range of the instrument may be much greater.