This following extract which i found on JSTOR not attributed to any article/publication is under the term 'music aesthetics'. While it may not be about visual music aesthetics and more audio and sensory aesthetics in relation to music i still found it interesting and perhaps could prove relevant.
Topic: Musical Aesthetics
In the pre-modern tradition, the aesthetics of music or musical
aesthetics explored the mathematical and cosmological dimensions of rhythmic
and harmonic organization. In the eighteenth century, focus shifted to the
experience of hearing music, and thus to questions about its beauty and human
enjoyment (plaisir and jouissance) of music.
The origin of this philosophic shift is sometimes attributed to
Baumgarten in the 18th century, followed by Kant. Through their writing, the
ancient term aesthetics, meaning sensory perception, received its present-day
connotation. In recent decades philosophers have tended to emphasize issues
besides beauty and enjoyment. For example, music's capacity to express emotion
has been a central issue. Aesthetics is a sub-discipline of philosophy. In the
20th century, important contributions to the aesthetics of music were made by
Peter Kivy, Jerrold Levinson, Roger Scruton, and Stephen Davies. However, many
musicians, music critics, and other non-philosophers have contributed to the
aesthetics of music.
In the 19th century, a significant debate arose between Eduard
Hanslick, a music critic and musicologist, and composer Richard Wagner
regarding whether instrumental music could communicate emotions to the
listener. Wagner and his disciples argued that instrumental music could
communicate emotions and images; composers who held this belief wrote
instrumental tone poems, which attempted to tell a story or depict a landscape
using instrumental music. Hanslick and his partisans asserted that instrumental
music is simply patterns of sound that do not communicate any emotions or
images.
Since ancient times, it has been thought that music has the
ability to affect our emotions, intellect, and psychology; it can assuage our
loneliness or incite our passions. The Ancient Greek philosopher Plato suggests
in The Republic that music has a direct effect on the soul. Therefore, he
proposes that in the ideal regime, music would be closely regulated by the state
(Book VII). There has been a strong tendency in the aesthetics of music to
emphasize the paramount importance of compositional structure; however, other
issues concerning the aesthetics of music include lyricism, harmony, hypnotism,
emotiveness, temporal dynamics, resonance, playfulness, and colour.
