Ionian Islands in Venetian hands since 1238. The islands thus became the only part of the Greek-speaking world to escape Ottoman rule, which gave them both a unity and an importance in Greek history they would otherwise not have had. Corfu was the only Greek island never conquered by the Turks. Under Venetian rule, many of the upper classes spoke Italian (or Venetian in some cases) and converted to Roman Catholicism, but the majority remained Greek ethnically, linguistically, and religiously. In the 18th century, a Greek national independence movement began to emerge, and the free status of the Ionian islands made them
Ionian School (music) several scores by these and other 19th and 20th century Ionian composers. The major inspiration for the Ionian School was considered to be the Italian musical tradition. However, as late as the 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 folklore elements both from the local tradition and from that of mainland Greece. Ionian School (music) The term Ionian (or Heptanese) School of Music (Greek: Επτανησιακή Σχολή, literally: "Seven Islands' School") denotes the musical production of a group of Heptanesian composers, whose heyday