Without fail a study in any depth of our fondness for music must eventually address the issue of consonance and dissonance. Past approaches to this issue have been bounded by a limited knowledge base and, further, marred by logical flaws, occasional hand waving, and the myopia of reductionism. Despite the explosion of progress in the last few decades – some of it quite substantial – we still lack a coherent understanding of this central issue. In this paper I will attempt a forward step by both defining and explaining consonance as distinct and objective matters.