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IMO, the books are great but they don't go very deeply into the math of chords or relationships between chords, no. Certainly there is math coverage of intonation (JI, 12TET, etc.), which leads to "why" chords might sound the way they do as stacked intervals with more or less pure dissonance or consonance. But the "why" of progressions are a level above that yet again. So I'm sure there are better works on chords. Fr…
Thanks for a detailed response. I'll check the references out. I am a lot less knowledgeable than you have imagined here. :-) Well, I know practically all the physics and electronics part, but have not found much that connects to music theory. I could figure the mathematical why's of scales and chords ("stacked intervals with more or less pure dissonance or consonance") by myself. But ever since have been struggling…
Two more enjoyable books on the math and physics of music (though, again, probably not far enough up the tree of abstraction for chords):
"The Science of Musical Sound" by Pierce (lovely little book, not too deep though, quite coffee tableable)
"Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics" by Benade (old book, considered a classic, reads like a science text)
Good luck!