thanks for your answers. I am a very very very poor musician, having played clarinet for only about 15 years (I stopped when I started to program, unfortunately, although I am not entirely sure that it is related). BTW, I started to learn clarinet when I was living in your country (1980-1988) I wasn't doing too bad with clarinet after those 15 years, but it is clear that I am not, have never been and will never be a good amateur musician. I have a poor ear. And if I had no money and was going to be going to try to sing in the Paris metro to try to get a bit of money, the best I would get is money from people asking me to stop driving them mad. ;-)

Having said all that, I have been very interested with the theory of music and acoustics, which is why I picked up on that. My own ear is certainly unable to hear the different between an A sharp and a B flat on a violin or in a string quartet.

Yet, I have had the chance in the past (late 1980s) to meet a number of times with the members of the Amadeus Quartet, in my view most probably the best string quartet (or perhaps even the best chamber music ensemble) of the last quarter of the 20th century, and discuss these matters and many others with them, especially by their first violin, Norbert Brainin. It was very interesting, as you can imagine, to meet such dedicated and universally recognized professionals. I had to a large extent a math view of the subject (equal temperament, easy things, logarithms), although I knew that even a perfect fifth does not match the mathematical notion, but they (especially Norbert) changed my view of the subject, even though my musical knowledge and capabilities were close to zero compared to them.

It is this experience that prompted me to answer your post, although it was perhaps not irrelevant, but certainly off-topic. I still thought it was interesting to raise the subject.

Cheers, Laurent.