Matthaei was born in Dresden in 1781. Little is known of his early life; it is thought he was largely self-taught as a violinist. In 1803 he arrived in
Leipzig, and was appointed as a soloist of the
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, of which the concertmaster was
Bartolomeo Campagnoli. Through patrons and friends he had the opportunity to study in Paris, where from 1804 he was a student of
Rodolphe Kreutzer. In 1806 he reappeared in public in Leipzig, and became important there in musical activities. With other members of the Gewandhaus Orchestra – Campagnoli,
Johann Georg Hermann Voigt and
Friedrich Dotzauer – he founded in 1808 a string quartet, the
Gewandhaus Quartet. (The quartet still exists today.) In 1811 Matthaei performed in Berlin, and in 1816 he toured northwest Germany. In 1818 he replaced Campagnoli as concertmaster of the Gewandhaus Orchestra; he held the post until his death in 1835. ==Compositions==