The term Ionian School of Music (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

: Επτανησιακή Σχολή, literally: Seven Islands

Ionian Islands

The Ionian Islands are a group of islands in Greece. They are traditionally called the Heptanese, i.e...

' School) denotes the musical production of a group Heptanesian composers, whose heyday was from the early 19th century till approximately the 1950s. Conventionally, it is divided in two periods: the First Generation (Πρὠτη Γενιά) from 1815, till the end of the 1860s, and the Second Generation (Δεύτερη Γενιά) from 1871 and onwards. Prominent representatives of this genre include Nikolaos Mantzaros

Nikolaos Mantzaros

Nikolaos Halikiopoulos Mantzaros was a Greek composer born in Corfu and the major representative of the so called Ionian School of music...

, Spyridon Xyndas

Spyridon Xyndas

Spyridon Xyndas or Spiridione Xinda was a Greek composer and guitarist, whose last name has also been transliterated as "Xinta", "Xinda", "Xindas" and "Xyntas".-Biography:...

, Spyridon Samaras

Spyridon Samaras

Spyridon-Filiskos Samaras was a Greek composer particularly admired for his operas who was part of the generation of composers that heralded the works of Giacomo Puccini...

, Pavlos Carrer

Pavlos Carrer

Pavlos Carrer was a Greek composer.Carrer was born in Zakynthos. He studied in Zakynthos and in Corfu. In the early 1850s he moved to Milan, where his first operas and ballets were performed at the stages of the Teatro Carcano and the Teatro alla Canobbiana. In the same city he published some of...

 and Dionysios Lavrangas.
The Music Museum of the Philharmonic Society of Corfu

Philharmonic Society of Corfu

The Philharmonic Society of Corfu is today widely known as a community band in Corfu, Greece. However, when it was founded in 1840, its initial scope was to become the first Greek music academy organised on European prototypes...

 has in its collections several scores by these and other 19th and 20th century Ionian composers.

History

The major inspiration for the Ionian School was considered to be the Italian musical tradition. However, as late as 1820s composers from Ionian Islands succeeded in shaping their own path towards 'national music' initially by using the Greek vernacular language, and later by incorporating folkore elements both from the local tradition and from that of mainland Greece.