[2] Snider also composed music at a young age, keeping it private until her junior year of high school when she showed her first works to her piano teacher, composer/pianist Laurie Altman, who encouraged her to study composition in college.

Snider enrolled in the composition master's program at New York University to study with composer Justin Dello Joio, whom she called "a brilliant, Nadia Boulanger-style teacher,"[4] but left after three semesters.

New Amsterdam Records, who published the album on October 26, 2010, describes the work as follows:Inspired by Homer’s epic poem, the Odyssey, Penelope is a meditation on memory, identity, and what it means to come home.

Suspended somewhere between art song, indie rock, and chamber folk, the music of Penelope moves organically from moments of elegiac strings-and-harp reflection to dusky post-rock textures with drums, guitars and electronics, all directed by a strong sense of melody and a craftsman’s approach to songwriting.

[22] Unremembered sets poetry by New York-based poet/writer Nathaniel Bellows, described as recalling "strange and beautiful happenings experienced during a childhood in rural Massachusetts.

The recording was co-produced by Snider with Lawson White and mixed by Grammy-winning producer Andrew Scheps, and made greater use of the multitracking and processing tools of the studio than did Penelope.

Snider’s first Mass and third album was commissioned by Trinity Church Wall Street, the renowned New York City sacred choral institution, and released on Nonesuch Records/New Amsterdam Records on September 25, 2020.

Thematically, NPR critic Tom Huizenga wrote that though Mass for the Endangered uses a religious framework, it instead "focuses not on our relationship to God, but instead to the flora and fauna on our planet.

Mass for the Endangered was among The Boston Globe’s "10 Reasons to Keep Falling for Classical Music"[27] and appeared on numerous year-end lists including NPR[28] and The Nation.

[35] In part for the success of her three albums of large-scale works for voices and instruments, The Washington Post named Snider one of the Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music in 2019.

[36] Elsewhere, she has been cited by critics as "a significant figure on the American music landscape",[37] "an important representative of 21st century trends in composition,"[38] and "one of the decade’s more gifted, up-and-coming modern classical composers.