“Majestically? Does that have a musical definition I don’t know about?”

When my non-musical Catholic husband whispered this question during sacrament meeting a few weeks ago, he opened my eyes to one of our hymnbook’s quirks. Alongside their time signatures, every one of our 341 hymns includes an adverb.* These aren’t the traditional Italian adverbs with classical meanings, like “allegro” or “andante.” Instead they seem to be rough English descriptions meant to cue stylings separate from speed.

As an organist I find these descriptors helpful. Even if a hymn has the same time signature, I’m more likely to pull out the trumpet stop for “majestically” and the dulciana stop for “prayerfully.” When I tried to explain this musical approach, my husband started flipping through the hymnbook and making fun of all the other adverbs. “Earnestly?” “Expressively?” “Resolutely?” Would the minor word difference actually change my musical choices? He theorized a bored 1980s hymnbook editor had just pulled out a thesaurus, knowing the exact adverb meanings wouldn’t matter since amateur LDS organists notoriously play everything too soft and too slow.

Curious, I came home and decided to map out the hymnbook’s adverbs.