Temperament is irrelevant to most music, even if you're talking about western music using the 12 tone scale. The exceptions are keyboards and electronic music.
The simple reason is that most instruments can't even be played consistently in tune, to the point where you could figure out if they're playing in any temperament at all. String instruments are tuned by pure intervals across the open strings, then the player has to figure out how the other notes should sound. They will push notes up and down to make them sound more "right" in the immediate context. Wind instruments are a bag of compromises.
A large percentage of musician jokes are about intonation.
Early keyboard instruments were tuned in simple temperaments that a musician could learn how to do quickly. A harpsichord had to be tuned before every performance. Equal temperament required an instrument that stayed in tune long enough to make it worth hiring an expert to tune it.
> String instruments are tuned by pure intervals across the open strings
Depending on what you mean by a 'pure interval,' it might come as a surprise that string instrumentalists tend to tune their fifths narrower than 3/2 (and apparently sometimes narrower than a 12-EDO perfect fifth!). This is so the perfect fifth above the highest string is tuned correctly as the major third (and some octaves) above the lowest string. Otherwise, the interval would be a Pythagorean major third (81/64) which is somewhat dissonant.
(In "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony," Duffin recounts how in the late 1800s, even the best piano tuners in Britain were unable to get exact equal temperament, being off by about 1 cent per note in such a way that favored common keys. And, even so, equal temperament for pianos was not popular until the 1910s -- non-equal temperaments were favored due to their sound rather than just their practicality.)
I'm not surprised at all. I was taught to use perfect intervals myself, and it's how I've always seen it taught. But tuning is a very interesting topic.
These days I play double bass in a jazz band, so of course every single instrument has its own tuning quirks.
An amusing anecdote: I played in a band, and the drummer complimented my intonation. I asked him how a drummer knows anything about intonation. He said: "My college major was trombone."
They will push notes up and down to make them sound more "right" in the immediate context.
Not all of the stringed players. One of the harder things on violin for me, after years of fretted instruments, is still intonation. Makes a mandolin seem like a push-button version of a violin. (We will save that infernal stick-and-horsehair thing for another discussion.)
The flip side is that when the mandolin gets out of tune (and oh, it does), you just have to live with it until the next opportunity to fire up the tuner.
The simple reason is that most instruments can't even be played consistently in tune, to the point where you could figure out if they're playing in any temperament at all. String instruments are tuned by pure intervals across the open strings, then the player has to figure out how the other notes should sound. They will push notes up and down to make them sound more "right" in the immediate context. Wind instruments are a bag of compromises.
A large percentage of musician jokes are about intonation.
Early keyboard instruments were tuned in simple temperaments that a musician could learn how to do quickly. A harpsichord had to be tuned before every performance. Equal temperament required an instrument that stayed in tune long enough to make it worth hiring an expert to tune it.