Ottoman Sources on the Development of the Taksim

The taksim (Arabic taqsim) is often referred to in the musicological literature of the Middle East as an instrumental “improvisation” (Nettl 1973: 11).2 The taksim has been known as a major musical genre during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in most of the countries of the Middle East which had been incorporated within the Ottoman Empire, especially Turkey, Syria/Palestine and Egypt. It is also significant in Tunisia, but less so in the rest of North Africa. In Iraq it became prominent only after the end of the Second World War. Earlier the taksim had probably been known only to and practiced by a small Ottomanized Iraqi elite. In other Arab countries, such as Morocco and Yemen, the taksim is largely a post World War II adaptation of Egyptian musical practice.3 In the European part of the Ottoman Empire, the taksim has also left important vestiges in the musics of Greece, Bulgaria, and Macedonia, and to a lesser extent Romania (Garfias 1981). Its name, and a few of its musical characteristics were known even within the instrumental klezmer repertoire of East European Jews (Beregovski/Slobin 1982: 539; Feldman 1993a). The fact that current Arabian and Turkish performance practices are not identical, and were even more differentiated early in the twentieth century when the first sound recordings of taksims were made in Turkey, Syria and Egypt, has not prevented Turkish, Syrian, Lebanese and Egyptian musicians from employing the word taksim to refer to all the local sub-styles of the broader taksim genre.