Charles Hutchinson Gabriel

Charles Hutchinson Gabriel (1856–1932) was an American gospel-song composer, lyricist, editor, and singing-school teacher. Born in Iowa, he grew up in a musical household and taught himself to play the family reed organ. By his teens he was already teaching singing schools and writing music, beginning a career that would make him one of the most prolific figures in American gospel hymnody.

Gabriel moved to California in the 1880s and served as Sunday school music director at Grace Methodist Church in San Francisco. He later settled in Chicago, where he edited and contributed to numerous hymnals, gospel-song collections, cantatas, and Sunday school books for publishers including E. O. Excell, Hope, and Homer Rodeheaver. His best-known works include “Send the Light,” “I Stand Amazed in the Presence,” and many other songs that circulated widely in revival and evangelical settings.

Gabriel also played an important role in the transmission of “Away in a Manger.” His Gabriel's Vineyard Songs of 1892 contains the earliest known printing of the third stanza, without an author attribution, and also presents a tune for the carol. He later issued further musical settings, making him a significant contributor to the carol's nineteenth-century musical history even though he cannot be securely identified as the author of the anonymous third stanza.