Original manuscript of Last movement

Georg Abraham Schneider was born in Darmstadt on 19th April 1770 and died in Berlin on 19th January 1839. Schneider was considered at his time to be an outstanding horn virtuoso, an "industrious and talented" instrumental composer and a "careful and conscientious" conductor. He gained his instrumental education with the Darmstadt State Musician, Johann Wilhelm Mangold. His theoretical grounding in composition was with Johann Gottlieb Portmann, the author of well known books on theory, and who was later to become Schneider"s father-in-law.

Schneider was employed as court musician in 1787 at the Darmstadt Court Orchestra. In 1795 he joined the Kapelle Orchestra of Prince Henry of Rheinsberg and remained there until the death of Prince Henry in 1802. From Rheinberg Schneider went to Berlin in 1803 as a horn player in the Royal Court Orchestra. In 1820 he was offered the position of Royal Musical Director in Berlin and this was followed in 1825 by his appointment as Kapellmeister of the Royal Prussian Orchestra and director of the joint Musical Choirs of the Royal Guard. He became a member and tutor at the Royal Academy of Berlin in 1833.

Of Schneider's prolific compositions, of which well over 300 survive, a large number of instrumental compositions appeared with various European publishers during the 19th Century. His pleasing melodic ideas and skill in instrumentation are described by C. Freiherr van Ledebur in Tonkünstler–Lexikon of 1861: