Abstract With the age of expansion and exploration in both Europe and Asia, there would come a time when the two worlds would inevitably converge. That junction between Europe and Asia came to be called the Middle East. This paper explores the influences of the Arabic culture on Europe, more specifically, the effect of Arabian musical traditions on the world's musical tastes. In examining the musical development of Western cultures, it becomes evident that the nations of Islam contributed, not only to its advancement, but also its direction, chiefly in preserving and spreading the scholastic ideas on music held by Greece, Rome, and the Middle East.
From the Paper "Furthermore, the invasion and fall of the Byzantine Empire by the Muslim nations brought about a migration of intellectuals from the capital, Constantinople, to the island of Crete and the great seaports of Venice. It was the influx of these intellectual thinkers coupled with the invention of the printing press that served as a catalyst for the Italian renaissance. The scholars that fled the turbulent scene of Constantinople brought with them not only many texts in both Greek and Latin, but also the ideas that facilitated the Renaissance movement."
