Yannis Papaioannou lived mainly in Athens, but also experienced a crucial period of study in Europe with musicians such as Arthur Honegger, and encountering the richness of post-war Parisian musical life. Papaioannou's stylistic phases reflect a panorama of 20th-century Greek art-music. His creative absorption of Western techniques ranged from the impressionism of the Preludes to the more traditional nationalism of Island Dance, from a post-1950 experimentation with the modernism of Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Webern, to the deeply expressive works of his final years.