On a barely related note- Have you read Diana Raffman’s book on music. There does seem to be some inate basis behind the twelve tone scale. It turns out that the ability of even trained classical Indian musicians (who use quarter tones) can only recognize the same note as the same note according to half-tones (this is after a certain temporal threshold has passed). For example, one such experiment has the clinician play a note (say C) first and then a bunch of other notes and have them tell you when you hit the same note, they will collapse the quarter tone above or below C and say it’s the same note.

And certainly the astounding ease with which western tonal pop has developed a hegemony in Asia suggests (check out statistics on karaoke in China for example) at least that the reason tonal music is so catchy and compelling has some physiological basis.

This is of course to be distinguished from normative questions. I don’t mean to equate natural and good.