Georg Abraham Schneider

Georg Abraham Schneider (19 April 1770 – 19 January 1839) was a German musician and composer. Biography Schneider was born in Darmstadt, where he originally learnt music as a member of the city’s alta cappella. From 1787 he played horn in the court orchestra of the nobel house Hessen-Darmstadt, then from 1795 for the Prussian royal court. Schneider’s compositions and performances focussed on the horn, and owe a stylistic debt to Haydn and Mozart. The invention of the valved horn by Heinrich Stölzel and Friedrich Blühmel was of great interest to Schneider, allowing the instrument to be played chromatically for the first time. In a report for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1817, Schneider wrote; “Because of its full and strong, yet soft and attractive tone, the Waldhorn is an extremely beautiful instrument; but, as is well known, it has until now been far behind almost all other wind instruments in its development, being very restricted to its natural notes …. Herr Stölzel of Breslau has now completely removed these shortcomings …. He has simply provided his horn with two airtight valves, which are depressed with little effort by two fingers of the right hand, like the ke