Much of today’s research into the nature of musical pleasure can be divided into two distinct areas – the study of the overtone spectra of musical consonance and the study of human physiological responses to musical sounds. The former is largely focused on adult participatory responses and the latter on the detection of biochemical activity. Neither area seems to beget credible answers to questions aboutf the origin of musical pleasure. Unpredictably the responses of newborn infants to the maternal voice are suggestive of a link between these two areas of research; this link leads to an elegant theory for the origin of the musical aesthetic.