Tempo, single, mezzo, due...?

[RayMcCullough]

What is the Definition of Tempo according to Itailian masters?

I'am pretty sure of what it means, but I need to here some other ideas and what the masters specifically say.

Thanks

[I. Hartikainen]

Hi,

digging up all the references would be an undertaking bit too big for a forum reply. But basically tempo means one of two things:

1) a measure of time (or distance since they are interchangeable) taken by a single fencing action (such as a strike from a high guard to a low one) in relation to itself or to another fencing action

2) an opportunity to strike (or more broadly, to gain an advantage over) your opponent.

To clarify further:

A tempo can be related to itself so that a full cut (a cut from high to low where point of the sword fully traverses the target) is considered a complete tempo (tempo intero) and a half cut (a cut which leaves the point in line towards the target) is considered half a tempo (mezzo tempo). In essence, the half cut is half of the full cut and therefore the former is a full tempo and the latter a half tempo.

A tempo can be related to the opponent's action: in brief your tempo will be either an attack or a defense, and respectively it will be contrasted by your opponent's defense or attack. In either case your tempo needs to be shorter than that of the opponent's in order to succeed. If your attack lands before your opponent's parry (or at least at the same instant) or if your parry makes contact before your opponent's attacks reaches its target your action has succeeded.

This way you can utilize the theory - or the understanding - of tempo to make right decisions when fencing.

When referring to the opportunities to strike the opponent various masters have different ideas, but what I find the most complete listing comes from Giovanni dall'Agocchie (and repeated later by Capoferro):

1) when you have hit your opponent's sword
2) when opponent's sword has traveled past your profile
3) when opponent rises his hand to attack
4) when opponent steps forward
5) when opponent injudiciously changes his position

To better recognize this, when you are fencing, if you hit your opponent without being hit yourself you have essentially properly taken a tempo. If you are able to, you can later analyze it and try to see whether the tempo was any of or a combination of the above.

Ultimately the word tempo is a general word meaning "time" and not every time you see it in an original text does it refer to a technical concept. For example:

"in un solo tempo": in one action/movement
"stesso tempo": at the same time
"in due tempi": in two actions/movements (for example, parrying and then striking)

The term "contratempo" has slightly different meanings in various texts. Basically it means hitting your opponent during their tempo. This explanation is just me speaking from personal experience as I haven't seen it phrased like this by any master, but I see it as an action where you attack your opponent outside of having a tempo yourself, but instead at the time when your opponent has a tempo to strike you. Basically you hit your opponent in his tempo, hence "contratempo".

I hope this helps you forward. Please remember that I mainly speak from a 16th century perspective and these ideas were not viewed exactly the same by all masters throughout the centuries. Quite close, but not exactly.

Yours,
Ilkka

[Jaron Bernstein]

That makes sense. It also could be argued that you will see commonality in the concept among those masters who spoke on it, even if they expressed it in different ways.

[RayMcCullough]

Hi,

digging up all the references would be an undertaking bit too big for a forum reply. But basically tempo means one of two things:

1) a measure of time (or distance since they are interchangeable) taken by a single fencing action (such as a strike from a high guard to a low one) in relation to itself or to another fencing action

2) an opportunity to strike (or more broadly, to gain an advantage over) your opponent.

To clarify further:

A tempo can be related to itself so that a full cut (a cut from high to low where point of the sword fully traverses the target) is considered a complete tempo (tempo intero) and a half cut (a cut which leaves the point in line towards the target) is considered half a tempo (mezzo tempo). In essence, the half cut is half of the full cut and therefore the former is a full tempo and the latter a half tempo.

A tempo can be related to the opponent's action: in brief your tempo will be either an attack or a defense, and respectively it will be contrasted by your opponent's defense or attack. In either case your tempo needs to be shorter than that of the opponent's in order to succeed. If your attack lands before your opponent's parry (or at least at the same instant) or if your parry makes contact before your opponent's attacks reaches its target your action has succeeded.

This way you can utilize the theory - or the understanding - of tempo to make right decisions when fencing.

When referring to the opportunities to strike the opponent various masters have different ideas, but what I find the most complete listing comes from Giovanni dall'Agocchie (and repeated later by Capoferro):

1) when you have hit your opponent's sword
2) when opponent's sword has traveled past your profile
3) when opponent rises his hand to attack
4) when opponent steps forward
5) when opponent injudiciously changes his position

To better recognize this, when you are fencing, if you hit your opponent without being hit yourself you have essentially properly taken a tempo. If you are able to, you can later analyze it and try to see whether the tempo was any of or a combination of the above.

Ultimately the word tempo is a general word meaning "time" and not every time you see it in an original text does it refer to a technical concept. For example:

"in un solo tempo": in one action/movement
"stesso tempo": at the same time
"in due tempi": in two actions/movements (for example, parrying and then striking)

The term "contratempo" has slightly different meanings in various texts. Basically it means hitting your opponent during their tempo. This explanation is just me speaking from personal experience as I haven't seen it phrased like this by any master, but I see it as an action where you attack your opponent outside of having a tempo yourself, but instead at the time when your opponent has a tempo to strike you. Basically you hit your opponent in his tempo, hence "contratempo".

I hope this helps you forward. Please remember that I mainly speak from a 16th century perspective and these ideas were not viewed exactly the same by all masters throughout the centuries. Quite close, but not exactly.

Yours,
Ilkka

Ok. A pace also.
So if the opponent cuts at your head and you go from terce/pflug postition to hangen and cut down at his head in one continuous motion that is single tempo. OK makes sense. since it would take the attacker the time to close the distance and cut in one tempo and it would take you one tempo to counter the action in the middle or simultaneously during his action.

That is what I thought and that seems to be what the masters are saying. Digrassi, Silver, Meyer, Pallas armata, etc...

This also fits in with Aristotle's Physics.
I need more sources. In time, I'll add to the library.

[Jonathan Hill]

I had this same discussion a while ago after I heard of a similar action being called stesso and due. IMO - That particular one falls into what can be considered the grey area. Was your action one smooth move or two separate actions, would it change if you separated the actions? You defended then attacked or was your defense part of your attack? Just because you performed it as a smooth action doesn’t mean you didn’t defend first then attack. I would actually argue that you acted in due tempi on that one, because your opponent struck, you moved to defend/made that transition to a defensive guard as part of your attack. There was time between your defense and offense, thus he also had time to act as well. Thus do we measure tempi in your time or theirs, and generally for Italian it’s theirs. That said, I have heard some refer to that same action as stesso tempi because you acted in one movement on your side, so you are measuring tempi in your action not your opponents. The defining aspect becomes did I stop momentum between my guard and strike.

The line between contratempo and stesso tempi seem to blur a bit for me, so perhaps I still don’t grasp it perfectly.

What is more clear of stesso tempi, would be by opponent cuts my head, and I transition to bicorno and catch his blade as I thrust at him.

[RayMcCullough]

I had this same discussion a while ago after I heard of a similar action being called stesso and due. IMO - That particular one falls into what can be considered the grey area. Was your action one smooth move or two separate actions, would it change if you separated the actions? You defended then attacked or was your defense part of your attack? Just because you performed it as a smooth action doesn’t mean you didn’t defend first then attack. I would actually argue that you acted in due tempi on that one, because your opponent struck, you moved to defend/made that transition to a defensive guard as part of your attack. There was time between your defense and offense, thus he also had time to act as well. Thus do we measure tempi in your time or theirs, and generally for Italian it’s theirs. That said, I have heard some refer to that same action as stesso tempi because you acted in one movement on your side, so you are measuring tempi in your action not your opponents. The defining aspect becomes did I stop momentum between my guard and strike.

The line between contratempo and stesso tempi seem to blur a bit for me, so perhaps I still don’t grasp it perfectly.

What is more clear of stesso tempi, would be by opponent cuts my head, and I transition to bicorno and catch his blade as I thrust at him.

"Was your action one smooth move or two separate actions, would it change if you separated the actions?"
One continuaous action or one tempo. If you seperated the actions that would be two, but why would you?

"You defended then attacked or was your defense part of your attack?"
My defense was part of my attack because it is best if every defense attacks.

"Just because you performed it as a smooth action doesn’t mean you didn’t defend first then attack."
True but my defense is my attack in one action/tempo.

" I would actually argue that you acted in due tempi on that one, because your opponent struck, you moved to defend/made that transition to a defensive guard as part of your attack. There was time between your defense and offense, thus he also had time to act as well. Thus do we measure tempi in your time or theirs, and generally for Italian it’s theirs."
If we measure the tempo by his tempo than while there is time for him to act, he will be out of tempo or as Silver puts it, we will be in the true place and time. He cannot strike us and we can strike him.

[I. Hartikainen]

Hi!

The action of parrying with a hanging guard and then striking would not be an action in a single tempo, but rather a due tempi done "almost in a single tempo", as Giovanni dall'Agocchie would put it.

An example of a single tempo defense would be a thrust to the face that closes the line of the incoming attack, as in Jonathan's example. Even this would generally be done against the preparation of the opponent's attack rather than an incoming blade.

The term "stesso tempo" is not used as a technical term as far as I can tell. It simply means "same time" and is used for example to say something like "as you parry the incoming strike, at the same time step diagonally to his left with your right foot".

The technical terms would be

In un solo tempo: a single action done without a change of direction*, usually incorporating two purposes into one movement such as a parry and riposte in a single tempo

In due tempi: two different actions usually defined both by a change of direction and a change of purpose, as in parry - riposte

Mezzo tempo: half a tempo, an action performed during the opponent's action, generally being shorter than his, or a term meaning half of another action such as half cut being half the length of a full cut. This term is rarely used in the texts.

Contratempo: an action performed during the opponent's action, or his tempo. As far as I can tell this is somewhat interchangeable with mezzo tempo, but perhaps mezzo tempo also would need to be a mezzo tempo in the sense of being a half cut regardless of the context in which it is used. Honestly I can not tell you for sure. In any case, contratempo is more commonly used, and refers to any action performed during the opponent's action. The definition of contratempo later on (perhaps first described like this by Marcelli, or maybe even later I am not sure now) changed to mean an action performed against a single time defense, for example where you lure your opponent to perform a single time defense with a feint or false attack, and then parry his action and strike. This was not the case before the late 17th century however.

So there is a little bit of gray area and overlap, but the most important concepts are the single tempo and the due tempi: a parry and strike in one action and a parry and strike in two actions.

*) Not described like this by any fencing master I know of, but according to what I have heard people explain about Aristotelian physics, on which we can assume the idea of tempo is somewhat based on, a tempo would be a movement between two positions of rest. A movement that is linear and holds no opposing factors (such as wavy motions or different curves) is called a perfect movement. A straight line or a single curve would hence be perfect. A single movement that is not directly straight or circular but still doesn't contain halts is still a single motion, but imperfect.

Therefore your action of smoothly parrying with a hanging parry and then striking could be seen as a single imperfect tempo, but in fencing terms it would be two distinct actions done sequentially and therefore due tempi. We can speculate, maybe this is why dall'Agocchie came to consider it "almost as in a single tempo".

Yours,
Ilkka

[Vincent Le Chevalier]

Something to note is that Aristotelian physics have a somewhat limited power of analysis... The handling of continuity is limited in a discrete view such as this.

Fencing authors noted that some tempi were longer than others so that even an action in a single time could provide variable windows of opportunity. I think this appears in Fabris in several places. For example a cut from an over-the-shoulder guard over a full step would have been considered as a single tempo, but so would a much shorter transition from seconda to quarta for example, right to left pflug if you like. Clearly these do not take the same time, and will not provide the same opportunities to counter, attack or evade.

It seems there is a judgement of value in describing an action in single tempo, as if it made the action more efficient. But if it's a big single tempo it still is vulnerable.

Actually accepting that a given action is done in two tempi can make the fencer more efficient, because it materializes a decision point in the middle of the action. If you parry, assess the situation, then attack in the most vulnerable opening, you are more ready to react against the opponent's variations than if you commit yourself to the whole move at the start. It might make the action due tempi, but they are smaller. It does not have to remove smoothness from the action either...

I like to think of tempo as the interval between two decision points, but this is not really supported by historical works.

Regards,

[Vincent Le Chevalier]

Thinking about it some more, it seems clear to me that if the action of the opponent finishes significantly before your own, you have not acted in mezzo tempo, no matter how many tempi your own action is described in. That would seem to be the case for the hanging parry flowing into a cut as I picture it. On the other hand if the hanging is not making blade contact and your counter cut lands before the cut of your opponent, this is a mezzo tempo, but you have to be faster than your opponent to pull that off.

Regards,