Schneider was born in Darmstadt, where he originally learnt music as a member of the city's alta cappella.

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 keys of the pianoforte, and restored to their previous position by the same two fingers with the help of attached springs; with these it is not only possible but also easy to produce a pure and completely chromatic scale from the lowest to the highest notes with a perfectly even tone.