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Manual: the hand keyboard of an organ (as opposed to the pedalboard).
Printed beside organ staves, often as Man. or Man. I, Man. II, to say the notes are played on a manual keyboard rather than the pedals (Ped.); numbers or names (Great, Swell, Positiv) choose the keyboard. The choice holds until another manual or the pedals are named.
Abbreviations: Man.
Assigning lines to different manuals lets you contrast registrations — a solo voice on one keyboard against an accompaniment on another. Mark changes where they are structural, and leave the hands time to move between keyboards. A piece marked manualiter is playable without pedals, which widens its use on small instruments.
Manuale is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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