He had early musical training from his father, who was a cellist in the ducal court of Zweibrücken.
Aged 14 he entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied the horn with Frédéric Nicolas Duvernoy.
He made concert tours of France and Switzerland; he settled in Basel and from about 1817 played horn in the orchestra there.
[1][2][3][4] From 1826 he gave concerts in Vienna with his brother Josef Rudolf Lewy, also a horn player.
and from 1836 gave very well-received concerts in Vienna with his children: Melanie, a harpist, Karl, a pianist, and Richard, a horn player.