Thoughts on Hanon
About a year ago I started working my way through Hanon. I purchased the complete 2nd edition, the one with the Matisse on the cover, quite a few years ago. For those among you who don’t know Hanon, here’s a bit of a backstory. “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…” (Wikipedia). Almost anyone who has studied piano has been subjected to the Hanon exercises.
When I started, I had great difficulty. I resolved to start at the beginning every day, adding 1 more exercise daily. That worked quite well, but I learned two important things in the process. The first was that if I didn’t concentrate fully on what I was doing, things fell apart rather immediately. So I learned to concentrate.
The second thing I learned over the weeks was that my fingers, especially on my left hand, were a lot less stiff and sore than they had been for some time. I don’t know if it’s incipient arthritis or simple age, but Hanon has at worst delayed the deterioration, and I think actually reversed it to some extent.
I continued this pattern until I hit #39. I never particularly enjoyed playing scales, and starting at #39 there are scales in every signature starting at C and working all the way to E Minor (melodic) in 36 increasingly difficult exercises. Then it switches to the Chromatic scales. It was at this point that I decided that from 39 on, Hanon’s reputation for wretched pianistic excess was well deserved.
So now I play all the way from 1 to 38 every Monday. It takes an hour. My favourite, by far, is #31. It’s the highlight of my extended Monday practice sessions. Do I lead an exciting life? Yes, in some ways I do. The other days I just play 3-5 random exercises.
Once Hanon is done I usually play a bit of Mozart and Beethoven. It’s amazing what Mozart was writing when he wasn’t even a teenager yet! And his later works, they make Beethoven look easy at times. And if I’m really feeling like a challenge, I’ll work my way part way through Benny Andersen’s “Tröstevisa”. Then on to the fiddle for a bit. By then it’s mid morning and time to take care of various online postings. And here’s the latest!