The Virtuoso’s Best Kept Secret:
Charles-Louis Hanon

Hanon Lessons...   Is there a best way to learn and play piano Hanon exercises?  This guest post from Sandra Sahyouni gives us many insights into how to play Hanon.

That dreaded fourth finger. 

You know the one I’m talking about! It slurs the notes it plays, like someone who’s had too many drinks, and stumbles as he walks, stumbles as he speaks, extending some syllables and sprinting—involuntarily—through others.

Your fourth finger refuses to cooperate with you, and is always lagging far behind the other fingers like the youngest, weakest and slowest child.

It’s even weaker than your smallest finger, who by virtue of being last, and benefiting from the weight and strength your wrist can lend it, can much better camouflage its fragility.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

In fact, it should not be this way if you want to progress as a pianist.

The fourth finger's, and the fifth’s, physiological weaknesses are probably the biggest technical challenge separating the beginners from the intermediaries, the intermediaries from the advanced, and everyone else, - from the virtuosi, who have glided over the mountain and reached the other side, where each finger can be independently controlled and all fingers sound equal.

Hanon Virtuoso Pianist sheet music book

You can achieve this. 

You can play the Chopin pieces that require fluid cascades of legato notes, just like the Bach pieces with clear and resonant non- legato.

The secret? A French pedagogue whose life spanned the greater part of the 19th century.

Charles-Louis Hanon was not much of a composer, and certainly not one in the great Romantic pianistic tradition that spawned Liszt, Chopin, Schumann and Beethoven.

He lived what appears to have been a modest and ascetic spiritual life. Despite having produced some programmatic piano pieces that have been qualified as ‘salon music’, his greater interest, and his legacy, was in piano method.

His claim to fame is a book titled “The Virtuoso Pianist in Sixty Exercises”.

If there is an equivalent in the piano world to going to the gym, this would be it. More than that, however, it’s akin to having a personal trainer who not only knows your body’s weaknesses, but having assessed them, coaches you through targeted exercises to strengthen them.

Play Hanon - Easy Hanon Exercises sheet music book

In the first thirty exercises, left hand and right hand play the exact same notes, first ascending, and then descending, the left hand always starting on the C two octaves below middle C, with the right hand one octave higher.  

In each exercise, the first measure is the only one you’ll need to sight read, and ideally, memorize. All subsequent measures of the same exercise replicate the first measure, and start progressively one note higher. The ascending first half of each exercise trains your right hand, the descending second, your left.   

All these things are precisely the reason why the thought of ‘sixty minutes of Hanon’ shouldn’t discourage you. 

I remember putting a novel in front of me on the piano, and reading while I played these exercises. Your mind can more or less switch off while you let your fingers work.

What contributes to this is also the fact that the exercises can be played consecutively and without interruption, since they all end exactly where the following exercise begins. This means you can repeat the exercises until your warm-up is satisfactory (and you need to turn the page of that novel you’re simultaneously reading).

In fact, Hanon himself recommends that each series of exercises are played one after the other, and several times in a row.

Piano Hanon exercises with a difference!
Salsa Hanon!

The best part of these thirty exercises? Everything is on the white keys.

Despite this, the technique your fingers will develop will equally reveal their benefits when you come to play pieces with black notes (Chopin’s Black Keys Étude anyone?). With time and practice, any frustrations you noticed while playing intervals, chords (whether broken or solid) and arpeggios will noticeably melt away. 

Exercises 31 to 43 are either preparations for scales, or scales.

Most students, by the time they start studying Hanon, will have already acquired a good basis in scales, therefore this part might elicit less interest.

In any event, whether one learns scales as part of an integrated Hanon programme, or separately, their importance does not need to be revisited here.

It is nevertheless curious that while most piano students will start their studies by learning scales, Hanon only thought it necessary to introduce them to his programme thirty exercises in.

Exercises 44 to 60 contain both the driest, and the most challenging of the lot.  They vary in length, structure, aim and content. No longer are they suited to daydreaming or novel-reading. Your mind must engage at this stage!

You must now train your fingers in solid intervals, note repetition, octave work, and trills, all of which lay the foundation for the sixtieth and final exercise in the book, the crowning achievement for the Hanon student: the tremolo.

Hanon exercise book - Junior Hanon

THE TREMOLO

At six pages long, the final exercise is the most challenging and difficult.

It tests every weakness, and compiles into one exercise all the technical challenges Hanon wants to help you solve—not least being the suppleness of your wrists, which the strengthening of your fingers should by now have freed up.

Also, it is the closest to a melody you will find in this book (nuances are even included for good fortune!).

Watch this decent attempt, but keep in mind the preambular note included in most editions of the book, which points out that the pianist Steibelt would make his audience shiver when he played the tremolo!

The tremolo highlights one very important issue with Hanon: like any repetitive exercise, whether at the gym or at your musical instrument, it presents the real possibility of injury if carried out incorrectly or prematurely.

Indeed, this has been one of the criticisms of Hanon.

The danger lies not in Hanon’s method, however, but in the student (or teacher) who ignores his or her physical limitations.

As in everything, perseverance and a healthy dose of moderation are key, and as with any muscle, you need to know when to stop!

Sandra Sahyouni is a featured writer for Tomplay interactive sheet music app; pop and classical scores for piano, violin, and more, accompanied with real recordings by professional musicians.   Sandra studied piano, theory and ear training at the McGill Conservatory in Montreal, Canada.


Music for Music Teachers has other great free resources for piano teachers!  Take a look:

Rote Learning - leaving the written page behind (or treating it like a map!)



MANY OF  THE BEGINNING WORKSHEETS ARE ALSO FOUND IN THE BOOK "SONGS OLD & SONGS NEW"

Interested in songs from the Bible for your students or church?  Check out my other website, SingTheBibleStory.com!

SingTheBibleStory.com clickable logo link

Recent Articles

  1. Christ Arose Sheet Music: Resurrection Day Song for Piano or Guitar

    Christ Arose sheet music
    "Christ Arose" sheet music is perfect for Easter, or as many Bible believers say, "Resurrection Sunday." Mixing somberness & triumph, this song explains Easter.

    Read More

  2. Sweet Hour of Prayer Hymn Sheet Music for Late Elementary Piano

    Swe
    Sweet Hour of Prayer hymn music has been around a long time, and is greatly loved still. Check out 4 arrangements for beginning to elementary piano, & guitar!

    Read More

  3. Vivaldi "Spring" Piano Sheet Music for Elementary Piano

    The Four Seasons Spring Vivaldi
    Vivaldi Spring piano sheet music in two versions for early students, with and without note names. A nice introductory piece to the classical repertoire!

    Read More

  4. 12 Major Scales Free Download for Piano: Chords, Arpeggios & Scales

    Key of C chords & scales
    12 major scales & chords: free, printable downloads. One & two-octave scales, I, IV & V chords & inversions & arpeggios, & a new PART 2!

    Read More

  5. Printable Piano Music What Do You Do With a Drunken or GRUMPY Sailor

    Sea chanty song
    Printable piano music What Do You Do with a Drunken Sailor, late elementary & first-year sheets! This may be your student's favorite for a long time.

    Read More

Songs Old & Songs New

All the first-year material I give my beginner students. 

Piano keyboard sheets, scales, chords, note-reading exercises, and over 256 pages of music!

The Story of Esther - a Bible opera!

Queen Esther in the Bible

This beautiful song book for piano & voice "Esther, For Such a Time as This",  available as a digital downloadtells the riveting story of the time when  Jews in ancient Persia faced a foe named Haman, and how a  brave young queen risked her life to save her people.

A good choice for a singing story-teller, an operatic group, a short theater production, or a class of children!

This book is also available from Amazon as a paperback.


Just the Black Keys, a piano song book for young beginners.

Just the Black Keys

This book is available as a digital download  from this site.  Visit this page to see some free examples from the book.

It is also available from Amazon as a paperback!

This is the perfect easy start for little pianists.

And when they start reading white-key notes on the staff, this is a fun easy resource to say each week, "Choose a new black-key song at home this week and figure it out to show me next lesson!"  They will be spending more time at the piano.

The Adventures of Tonsta, Volume 1, is a book about a young boy travelling over mountains and fjords from village to village, encountering trolls and helping folk in distress.

The Adventures of Tonsta

A perfect read aloud storybook
for little boys or girls. 

The Adventures of Tonsta highlight the travels of a very young boy with a good heart, who goes about helping folk in trouble.  

With a red cap on his head and a sack of tools slung over his shoulder, Tonsta seems to meet people in distress wherever he goes.

Lots of trolls in this book - including one who gives him a Christmas gift!

Available at Amazon

Sign up for "Take Note!" to see what's new every month.


About the Author

Dana Thynes

Hi, I'm Dana!  (Say that like "Anna".)  I'm the owner of Music-for-Music-Teachers.com, and a newer site, SingTheBibleStory.com.

Like some of you, I've been playing the piano since early childhood, and have added a few other instruments along the way, plus an interest in arranging and composing music.

You can find out more about me and the reason for this website at my About Me page.