Literature and Music

music can be considered literature as songs can be considered poems given a melody and set to a rhythm. You are however referring to the less obviously literary kind of music - wordless instrumentals or the part of the song without vocals. Here it gets tricky.

 1. the similarities between music and literature include:
i. they are both arts
ii. they can both be put in writing - both have letters that represent sound
iii. I think that they are both mediums for story telling

 2. because of its richness in terms of the layers of composition and range and also because of its long tradition as a medium of story telling especially accompanying opera, classical music I think most stands out as a literary genre of music.

Generally speaking, I don't think that there is any real reason why music cannot be considered a literary art form. There are those who would exclude it from the category based on the fact that it is primarily an aural form rather than a written one. But I would remind them that the oldest form of literature is oral literature and in any case music can be written down. Yet others might say that music isn't literature because it doesn't have words but what are words but sounds that have meaning. In a musical piece each note has meaning; maybe not in the same way as words so that one note translates as horse or another balloon but they carry meaning that tells us a character is happy or depressed or really angry with the world. Most important is that music can tell a story which is what literature is all about.