The art of Taqāsīm: dividing time and charging silence

The art of taqāsīm: dividing time and charging silence delves into the intricacies of this musical tradition. Emerging in the second half of the 16th century at the Ottoman court, taqāsīm initially referred to unmeasured vocal and instrumental improvisation. Ibn al-Tahhan, a 11th-century Fatimid scholar, mentioned taqsīm in his Hāwī al-Funūn wa-Salwat al-Mahzūn, describing it as instrumental performance on strings, pipes, and drums.

However, he wasn't sure if it was composed or improvised, a common trend at the time, as improvisation was considered less accomplished than carefully crafted composition.

Fathallah al-Shirwani, in the mid-15th century, even deemed improvisation the "lightest" of musical forms. This coincided with the significance of rhythmic cycles, as highlighted in al-Silakuni's 16th-century treatise. The Kitāb al-Aghānī suggested that improvisation was originally a less elaborate form of composition. The improviser, known as the rājilan, composed and sang while standing, while the ḍārib played the oud, enabling greater melodic refinement.

Mikhail Mishaqa, in his 1840 Risāla Shihābiyya, classified instrumental music into two types: measured, called bashraf, and unmeasured, taqsīm. However, he didn't clarify if the described performance was composed or improvised. The development of instrumental taqsīm in Istanbul paralleled the diminishing space for improvisation in Egypt and the Levant, especially after the Mamluk state's fall and the patron class's collapse.

This decline is evident from the vanishing names of professional improvisers and the scarcity of specialized music theory writing in Egypt and the Levant during the 16th to 19th centuries. By the mid-19th century, Egyptian music was perceived only as "bound to the words of its people," merging music and song into a single entity. This perspective in Egypt wouldn't shift until the 1870s when the Khedive invited Istanbul musicians to teach Egyptians.

Meanwhile, Morocco, untouched by Ottoman rule, preserved old nūbas or musical suites, including instrumental preludes and distinctive, fixed passages, known as bughyāt and t awshiyāt, with prominent instrumental roles in the tarab al-āla tradition. The term taqsīm also appears in Morocco for solo vocal improvisations within these suites. The origin of this terminology, whether through cultural exchange with the Ottomans or a modern designation, remains unclear.