Charles-Louis Hanon
French musician (1819-1900)
Charles-Louis Hanon (2 July 1819 – 19 March 1900) was a French piano pedagogue and composer. He is best known for his work The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises, which is still used today for modern piano teaching, but over the years the method has also faced criticisms.
Biography
Charles-Louis Hanon was born in northern France in the village of Renescure on 2 July 1819. Trained as an organist by a local teacher, it is not known if he received more advanced musical education. At age 27, Hanon moved east from Renescure to Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he lived with his brother François, who was also a musician.
Music was never the exclusive focus of Hanon's life: he was also a devout Roman Catholic, a Third Order Franciscan and a member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.
It is known from an 1869 article that Hanon was involved with a monastic order called the "Brothers of the Christian Schools". Founded in the 17th century by Saint John Baptist de la Salle, the schools run by the order provide free instruction to poor children. One such school was established in Boulogne-sur-Mer in approximately 1815 by Léon de Chanlaire and Father Benoît-Agathon Haffreingue; free music instruction was offered there by 1830.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Charles-Louis Hanon” as french musician (1819-1900). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q651972. VIAF identifies the subject as 47026815. The Library of Congress control number is n88623797. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1819, 1900, 1869 and 1815.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles-Louis Hanon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.