I urge anyone interested in this topic to read Helmholtz's "On the sensations of tone", a fascinating 19th-century tour-de-force trying to understand music sens

I urge anyone interested in this topic to read Helmholtz's "On the sensations of tone", a fascinating 19th-century tour-de-force trying to understand music sensation as coming from physical principles, deriving the standard western intervals and consonance/dissonance from first principles (beats between upper partials), and for which he is considered the father of acoustics. He spent 8 years researching in order to produce it, and is to me a great example of a 19th century hacker.