Pipe organs may have as many as five "manuals", each of them almost the size of piano keyboard, and if would not be enough may even feature the feet keyboard. And my 88 key piano keyboard already covers the majority of the hear-able sound range, probably no more than 20 or about keys could be added to the sides, unless to play ultrasound for bats and whales.

Is it so that organ has multiple keys for the same note? How common is to play same note using different keys/pipes on the same piece of organ music?

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    I don't think the manuals are always as extensive as a pianoforte keyboard. Apart from that I believe the manuals are wired to a different set of organ pipes, and hence have a different tone color. I think this wiki entry may be of some use: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_console – Roland Bouman May 31 '14 at 9:46
  • This is regional thing. European keyboards now typically extend to 4 1/2 octaves (5 in France), while in America much wider manuals occur, but fewer aliquot stops. – Kilian Foth Aug 19 '16 at 6:54

The different manuals are assigned to different stop combinations. By pulling out different stops, different sets of pipes sound when you press a key (or pedal). Having more than two manuals allows the performer to rapidly switch from stop-combination to another, or to make the left and right hands sound different. In addition, the different manuals can be linked to one another, i.e. depressing a key on a given manual also causes the corresponding key on a different manual to be depressed. Since this linkage can be achieved by pulling a single lever, it is an easy way to significantly modify the sound produced by the organ.


Important addition to Daves answer: Note, that an organ does not support touch dynamics. As soon as you press the key you get the sound, no matter how soft you touch. To achieve different dynamic levels you need another, weaker or stronger registered manual. By the way, this is also the reason for harpsichords having more than one manual.


In addition to what everyone else said, having more manuals making it easier for the organist to change sounds quickly but, also, each manual is called a division and all the pipes for that manual are generally in its own location. Here is a recording I made utilizing all the divisions rapidly.

This isn't a good recording in that the camera which also recorded the audio was placed near the console and you can't hear the room. The lowest manual (Choir) sounds from the balcony. The second one (Great) sounds behind me RIGHT IN MY EAR. The third (Swell) sounds across the chancel. The fourth (Solo) is across the chancel up above the Swell. The people in the pews can hear the sound coming from and bouncing about different locations.
Toccata et Fugue in D Minor


Some pieces call for distinctly different sounds for the melody and accompaniment. This is often a requirement for trumpet voluntary type of music. The right hand usually plays the melody on the Swell with a reed, and the left hand plays with Diapason stops on the Great. On slower pieces, you might want just the melody to have a tremolo, and be able to open/shut the swell box for dynamics, but those effects would not be applied to the Great manual.

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