“It would be the same to the ear whether 2/4 or 3/4: it would not be a mathematical blunder, but a very clumsy musical one.
“You have made just such a mistake in your otherwise beautiful Basso ostinato. I made the discovery yesterday that in this instance 5/4 time was not at all necessary. You must own that a series of three bars of 5/4 is mathematically equal to a similar series of 3/4 time;[109] in music, on the contrary, the difference between them is quite as sharp as between 3/4 and 6/8.
“In my opinion, your Basso ostinato should be written in 3/4 or 6/4 time, but not in 5/4.