Chrétien Urhan

Chrétien Urhan (Baptised as Christian Urhan; 16 February 1790 in Montjoie – 2 November 1845 in Belleville) was a French violinist, organist, composer and player of the viola and the viola d'amore.

His father first introduced him to the violin. He was first mentioned in 1804 by Joséphine de Beauharnais that he had replaced a violinist for a performance of Joseph Haydn's The Creation, at the young age of 14. From there he was sent to work in Paris, where he took instruction from Jean-François Le Sueur, master of the chapel of the Tuileries Palace. He also learned from prominent teachers such as François Habeneck, Rodolphe Kreutzer and Pierre Rode. He was invited to join the imperial chapel as a violinist in 1810.

In this period the young Urhan shared lodgings with his friends the harpist Franz Anton Stockhausen (father of ) and the painter Carl Joseph Begas the elder (who was studying with Antoine-Jean Gros, 1813–15). In 1815, through a Quartermaster in the Prussian army of occupation, Urhan and Stockhausen (who corresponded with Ludwig van Beethoven) obtained a score of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony and set it before Habeneck, with the result that the work was introduced to Paris. The two were among Amis de Beethoven, or Beethoven-Bruder in Paris, together with Wilhelm Mangold and others. In the early 1820s the violinist Sina, a member of the string quartet led by Schuppanzigh for Andrey Razumovsky, with Urhan gave new encouragement to Habeneck to continue with the master's works. Until Stockhausen's marriage to the singer , a member of their circle, in 1825, he lived with Urhan, who remained a lifelong friend.

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