William Gustavus Fischer

William Gustavus Fischer was born in Baltimore in 1835, the son of a German immigrant. He began singing in a German church as a child and studied piano and organ, but his first trade was bookbinding at J. B. Lippincott in Philadelphia. In 1858 he became a music professor at Girard College. He later co-owned a successful piano and music business, leaving his teaching post in 1868 as the firm expanded. Records associated with his burial place identify him and his family with Christ Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.

Fischer became a choir director, revival musician, editor, and composer of roughly two hundred Sunday school and gospel tunes. In 1876 he directed a choir of about one thousand voices for the Philadelphia revival campaign associated with Dwight L. Moody and Ira D. Sankey. This work placed him within the expanding urban network that carried American gospel song through mass meetings, inexpensive songbooks, and denominational publishing.

His specific contribution to I Love to Tell the Story was twofold: he composed the tune now called HANKEY and wrote the refrain attached to Hankey's selected stanzas. The combined song appeared in Joyful Songs in 1869 and was later included in the influential Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs of 1875. Fischer's straightforward melody, refrain structure, and simple harmony helped turn a passage from a long English poem into a durable congregational gospel hymn.