At the crossroads between East and West, between two such different cultural currents, Greece received and creatively assimilated diverse influences.

With the fall of the City in 1453, the collapse of the Byzantine Empire was completed. The four hundred years of slavery that followed, until the Revolution of `21 and the creation of the Greek state, hindered the natural development of modern Hellenism and naturally limited spiritual progress. In music, these years had a particularly inhibiting effect.

From the 12th to the 13th century, while the West is experiencing a social and spiritual rise, Byzantium, weary from long struggles – rebellions, religious disputes, crusades, external invasions – and financially exhausted, is heading towards its fatal end.

At the time when the new technique of polyphony begins to develop in the West, in Byzantium, the Orthodox Eastern Church, initially for doctrinal reasons and later in opposition to the Church of Rome, fervently rejects every innovation.