Films and TV shows have soundtracks. Authors often write to specific songs or associate music with their works. The "writing playlist" is sought after by many fans, and famixes (playlists often created for public listening attempting to capture the mood or heart of a character or story) in and of themselves are becoming a new genre of playlist. Some songs even today tell stories, and may rise out of the tradition of epic poetry. To what degree can music tell a story on its own? How often does the line intersect? Should it? Is some form of narrative inherent in any medium using words? And how does this relate to scores or instrumental themes?
This is a bit of a broad topic with many topics within it. It would be better to focus on an aspect of this (i.e. fanmixes, writing playlists, songs as epic poems).
There has been an academic debate going on for a long time regarding whether wordless music means something. There are countless musicological articles about a piece of music and its possible meanings, particular within its historical context (I would recommend reading some Susan McClary), which I think makes it quite clear that all music has meaning. In short, that aspect of the topic strikes me as far too broad; it would be better to focus in on the meaning of a particular piece if you go that route, in my opinion (I'm actually writing an article right now that does that!), or else find a way to narrow down that aspect of the topic in a different way. – Laura Jones8 years ago