Well actually if you read my paper on Mozart and the colour of tuning in Mozart's day you'll see that the quote that you specifically chose relating to K280, to Meantone very much makes sense. If you _listen_ to my recording of the slow movement of the K280 you'll hear expressions of sadness, grief, objection "why has this happened to me" and a whole host of emotions consistent with being buried in the grave and consistent with the reported attributes of the key of F minor.
With regard to shape-shifting of chords
is an example where through modulation the temperament gives us landmarks on the journey through the piece.
With regard to the Raindrop prelude, there is a good example for experiment. The software that I have pointed to gives you the opportunity to try it. I'm not aware of other software to do so. The trial is comprehensive and free and gives you the opportunity to try, to prove or disprove what I am saying. If other software exists with functionality for this purpose kindly let me know and I'll draw attention to it likewise.
If you or anyone else comments disparagingly without having done the experiments, nor the calculations, you're demonstrating lack of scientific objectivity that you espouse. Scientific method requires doing the experiments. The software provides the tool and as a statistician you're able to do the mathematics on the subject of harmonic accordance. You appear to be commenting promoting scientific rationality having done neither the experiment nor the mathematics.
Those who actually tune, hear. What we hear is an analogue of the mathematics. It's not written but is valid.
The Raindrop becomes a really interesting example when we play it on a tuning with harmonic accordance. Essentially by forcing the Pythagorean comma to be divided among 5 perfect fifths rather than 12, we put inaccuracies of the scale further apart. When we divide it among 12, the whole point of equal temperament is that it puts the fifths near enough perfect to be rather good - and near enough for them all to resonate close to the harmonics and beat. So none are still. All the thirds beat at a perfectly increasing rate as we go up the scale. Beating means that the sound is moving. Nothing is still. This gives the gleam, the glistening shimmering effect to a fully harmonically capable piano. An example of this were the concert Bechsteins around 1900 which made the unison strings of different lengths as an ultimate tool to give that gleaming shimmering sound in which nothing is still and everything moves. Singingly.
So in contrast when we make perfect seven or eight fifths in the scale, we reduce the primary modes of resonance with harmonics down from twelve down to seven or eight. We put many thirds further from the 5th harmonic so we reduce the numbers of close beating resonances there, and change the tonality of the sound coming from the instrument and the key.
In the home keys of C and G we have near perfect thirds and more than equal temperament flattened fifths. These keys sound warm and still with the perfect thirds. In Kellner the F major the third is nearly perfect and the fifth perfect. We then get a warm balanced harmonic resonance from the bass strings.
If you've ever had the opportunity to construct sounds using a Hammond Organ with drawbars you'll be familiar with the construction of different organ stops, flutes, diapasons, oboes, clarinets, trumpets with the different proportions of the addition of harmonics. So using tuning to get different harmonics to be prominent changes tonality as we change key.
The remote keys such as Db F# and Ab have perfect fifths giving stillness to those intervals and allowing the third to sing. That singing is audible in the recording of the Chopin Nocturnes in Alderney. B major has sharp thirds and a tempered fifth, and upon which arpeggiated passages skate on ice, as demonstrated in other videos that no doubt I've quoted. All the keys had different aural effects.
Back to the Raindrop prelude. Chopin is known for
a. having practiced on the pantalon. Without dampers the pantalon encaptures the spirit of the hammered dulcimer at the heart of folk music and which so inspired much of the origins of Chopin's music.
b. indicating pedal markings requiring the sustain pedal to be used for extended passages and even beyond a conventional change of bass chord.
In the Raindrop this can be accommodated especially well with the reduced modes of resonance that the unequal temperament provides, reducing the tonal confusion and movement as a result of holding the pedal down. It is possible using the technique of not allowing any subsequent note to interrupt the sound of the previous note, playing lighter and faster. When one does this the raindrop can cease to be the rather boring sound we hear on recordings on Classic FM and instead becomes the landscape and seascape at Valdemosa or Deia in Mallorca nearby. One can see the still sea and mist and not see the junction of sea and sky, with drizzle falling out of the mist, black clouds and sunshine shining through.
The temperament provides new perspectives on performance.
Music nowadays has tended towards the circus act of speed and volume and virtuosity with accuracy aiming for a repeatable performance on a standard instrument in a standard tuning in which all is standard and each of the keys are the same without variation.
This is distracting from the music, from musicality, from musicians listening to the sound and adapting to what they hear and what is written into the music. This is why I say insistently that equal temperament is bad for music. Real music.
With regard to the Meantone experiment with Beethoven's tempest you'll see on that YouTube page the comments of someone who starts as derogatorily as yourself but then goes to find the original Shakespeare play and then sees, hears and understands the music and the pointer I've given.
In quoting this example you appear to have not done the homework to which I've pointed.
The experiment that you did was admirable but was singular, on a low statistical level and unfocussed on what you were looking for. "Does it sound nice" is one question but "Is there any purpose to changing interval sizes and what effects to they give?" is another whilst "What effect do different interval sizes have on resonance?" is another.
Whilst matters of tuning and opinion can be subjective as a matter of taste and personal taste and conditioning, the harmonic series is something fixed with which there is no room for anything subjective or a matter of mere opinion. Questions relating to the extent to which one moves notes in tuning and their effect, and as to whether composers exploited it, and what effect this has on the piano sound and technique of playing the instrument are very much more intertwined and complex than the experiment in subjectivity you conducted.
This thread was started in 2010 contemporary with
https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/1590814/all/Some_sweet_video's:_an_older_p.html where appreciation was expressed for my work and the experiments I was doing and publishing and as here was no matter for controversy for some eight years.
One page of gentlemanly discussion on this thread and examples in 8 years then two pages of controversy in less than a month speaks for itself about the nature of current contributors. The controversy here recently has started with people who have not done the experiments of playing either on real instruments or on suggested software, not looked at the Shakespeare to which Beethoven pointed Schindler, nor done the calculations of coherence of resonance between harmonics and scale notes and their correlation in equal and other temperaments.
Until those who consider that my work in this thread should be "debunked" have explored those practical and academic areas, their debunking is flawed and a matter of trolling my long standing thread and the serious work I've been undertaking for over a decade in the serious effort to bring higher standards of musicianship and appreciation of classical music back into the more popular understanding and domain.
Here's another person on this forum who comes to similar conclusions as I express in this thread
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=40017.0Best wishes,
David P
Topic: Chopin 24 preludes - should they be performed in Unequal Temperament?