Gabriel del Orbe was a Dominican composer born in 1888 in Concepción de la Vega, a city in the fertile Cibao valley that has long been a cradle of Dominican culture and music. Working in the European Romantic tradition and within the classical idiom, Del Orbe was among the generation of Dominican composers who sought to bring formal Western compositional techniques to bear on a national musical identity.

His works reflected the lush Romantic aesthetic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with an emphasis on melody, harmonic richness, and emotional expressiveness. Concepción de la Vega's cultural energy infused his musical imagination, even as his training oriented him toward European models. Del Orbe passed away in 1966, having lived through eight decades that witnessed the Dominican Republic's most dramatic political and social upheavals — all of which formed the backdrop against which he quietly pursued his art.