Charles-Louis Hanon was a French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

 pedagogue and composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

. He is best known for his work The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises

The Virtuoso Pianist In 60 Exercises

The Virtuoso Pianist by Charles-Louis Hanon, is a compilation of sixty exercises meant to train the pianist in speed, precision, agility, and strength of all of the fingers and flexibility in the wrists. First published in Boulogne, in 1873, The Virtuoso Pianist is Hanon's most well-known work,...

, which has become the most widely used set of exercises in modern piano teaching.

He was born in Renescure

Renescure

-References:*...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 in 1819, and died in Boulogne-sur-Mer

Boulogne-sur-Mer

-Road:* Metropolitan bus services are operated by the TCRB* Coach services to Calais and Dunkerque* A16 motorway-Rail:* The main railway station is Gare de Boulogne-Ville and located in the south of the city....

 in 1900.

Piano students all over the world know of Hanon’s famous training exercises for pianists. Both Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...

 and Josef Lhévinne

Josef Lhévinne

Josef Lhévinne was a Russian pianist and piano teacher.Joseph Arkadievich Levin was born into a family of musicians in Oryol and studied at the Imperial Conservatory in Moscow under Vasily Safonov...

 claimed Hanon to be the secret of why the Russian piano school delivered an explosion of virtuosi in their time, for the Hanon exercises have been obligatory for a long time throughout Russian conservatories; there were special examinations at which one had to know all exercises by heart, to be played in all tonalities at highly advanced speed.

Although the value of Hanon's exercises is highly recognized by most of the greatest pedagogues and pianists, the exercises are not without their detractors. Some critics have questioned the merits of the independent finger technique which the exercises seek to cultivate, with some pedagogues, such as Abby Whiteside

Abby Whiteside

Abby Whiteside was an influential and controversial American piano teacher. She challenged the finger-centric approach of much classical piano teaching and instead advocated a holistic attitude in which the arm and torso are the conductors of a musical image conceived first in the mind and...

, considering them to be actively harmful.

It has been a recent trend for music schools to hold a Hanon Marathon, Church Street School for Music and Art

Church Street School for Music and Art

The Church Street School for Music and Art is Tribeca's only non profit school for the arts and is an institution that has served the downtown and outer community since 1990. It is located in Manhattan, New York.-External links:*...

 being the first to have coined the term and held the event, in which Hanon exercises are played competitively.

Other works of Hanon include 50 instructional pieces, Méthode Élémentaire de Piano, and a collection of 50 Ecclesiastical Chants.

Charles Nunzio wrote "Hanon for Accordion", a two-volume set of exercises for Piano Accordion based on a similar philosophy, which has recently been reissued in an updated edition. A Hanon for guitar and bass have also been written.

External links

• The Hanon exercises are available for free at www.hanon-online.com

See also

• Five finger exercise
  Five finger exercise
  A five finger exercise is a musical composition designed primarily for the purpose of exercising all one's fingers. A typical example is the Hanon Piano Exercise....