1819–1900 · France · Romantic
Charles-Louis Hanon (1819–1900) was a French musician, composer and teacher who lived in Boulogne-sur-Mer. He is known for The Virtuoso Pianist, a collection of 60 exercises for the fingers and wrists that appeared in 1873. These exercises are still used today in teaching the piano, and the collection is known around the world.
Charles-Louis Hanon came into the world on 2 July 1819 in the village of Renescure in northern France. He seems not to have had a systematic musical education; it is known that he studied the organ with Charles Vervoitte.
At 27 Hanon left Renescure for Boulogne-sur-Mer, to the east. He shared a home there with his brother François, another musician.
In 1846 Hanon took over from Vervoitte as organist of the church of Saint-Joseph in Boulogne-sur-Mer. In 1853 he was dismissed and the young Alexandre Guilmant was appointed in his place.
Hanon did not leave the town. He taught the piano in the town's schools and in church shelters, and he lived in Boulogne-sur-Mer for the rest of his life.
Music never filled the whole of Hanon's life. He was a devout Catholic who belonged to the Third Order of St Francis and to the Society of St Vincent de Paul. He was known for his extreme religiosity.
An article of 1869 links Hanon to a monastic order, the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Its schools teach poor children without charge, and the school in Boulogne-sur-Mer gave music lessons for nothing.
Hanon's first published work was Les Montagnes de la Savoie, a fantastic piece for piano that appeared in 1854. It was followed by collections for teaching the piano, the organ and the harmonium, which was coming into wider use in village churches at that time.
His manual on accompanying church chant was in very high demand. It was meant for parishioners with no musical training, who were to be taught a simple accompaniment on the harmonium. For this manual Hanon received a letter of thanks from Pope Pius IX in 1867. His manuals also include a complete course for the organ (1863–1868) and a complete course for the piano (1872).
Hanon is best known for The Virtuoso Pianist, a collection of 60 exercises that build agility, strength and independence of the fingers along with suppleness of the wrists. It was first published in 1873 in Boulogne-sur-Mer.
This is the third part of a four-volume teaching manual. The first part introduced a beginner to the basics of technique and notation, the second held pieces and excerpts from earlier works adapted for teaching, and the last consisted of Hanon's own piano pieces.
In 1878 the whole of Hanon's work won a silver medal at the world fair in Paris, and the Paris Conservatoire took it up for teaching that same year. A letter from the Conservatoire's leading teachers Antoine Marmontel, Georges Mathias and Félix Le Couppey, printed in the reissue of 1878, confirms this.
Hanon died in Boulogne-sur-Mer on 19 March 1900, aged 80. In the years after the manual appeared, his collection became very widely known and popular among musicians and teachers around the world.
Hanon wrote teaching manuals, and the most important of them is The Virtuoso Pianist. These are finger exercises with a purely mechanical aim (the last one, Tremolo, is perhaps the exception): they repeat various figures, usually across several octaves. Before almost every exercise the technique is briefly described. For octaves, for instance, Hanon advises attacking them with the forearm.
His other works include the Méthode élémentaire de piano, 50 instructional pieces and a set of 50 church chants. For organ or harmonium Hanon wrote two programmatic musical pictures: Bethléem, a religious pastoral, and Le Jugement dernier.
Internationally, The Virtuoso Pianist has long been central to piano teaching, above all in the Russian piano school. In Russian conservatories the exercises were once compulsory: examiners wanted them from memory, at high speed and in every major and minor key.
The method also has opponents: some critics question the value of the independent finger technique it develops, and the teacher Abby Whiteside thought the exercises actively harmful. Even so, the collection has been published in at least eleven languages and adapted for various instruments.
The site offers the edition The Virtuoso Pianist (Part I) for solo piano. Its level is marked intermediate-plus. It is the place to begin getting to know Hanon.