Fantasia is incredible. I also still think it's an underutilized art form to have the music drive the picture rather than the other way around (three-minute music videos aside). For instance, I've always thought that Mahler's 3rd symphony could make an epic fantasy film - actors, battles, special effects, and no spoken dialogue.
Kubrick does something like this, in parts of his films. Long scenes in Barry Lyndon and 2001 strike me as driven by, or interpretations of, the music. Of course there is a kind of "plot" going on, but these films can be seen as stealth abstract art.
Also, in Tarantino the music is often one of the major characters.
The weird thing about 2001 is that Kubrick actually commissioned an original score for the movie. The classical music was just intended to be used as a placeholder until the "real" music was ready.
After seeing how well it worked, Kubrick scrapped the original score and kept it.
Better explanation: the music drives the interpretation of the editing! The great director creates the raw material which can be assembled in such a way as to fit the music.
I also really like how Terrence Malick uses sound. Especially Badlands, where the sounds (and lack of it) perfectly conveys a sense of small town ness.
There are some great contemporary directors in the music video space that are doing amazing narrative work with the format. I'd definitely check out these pieces by Tom Haines (https://vimeo.com/72176166) and Abteen Bagheri (https://vimeo.com/129684032).
Those have words/lyrics. I'm thinking more like silent films except where the music isn't incidental. Symphonies can sometimes have singing, but the singing wouldn't be done by a character on-screen.
There was a scene in Peter Weir's "Fearless" starring Jeff Bridges where a key sequence was silent except for a recording of a Gorecki symphony... beyond that I'm kind of drawing a blank.
EDIT: Ballet would be a better example. Except without so much dancing. :-)
I know you're talking about specifically word-less music but there are some pretty cool examples where the lyrics are more abstract and animation is connected without being literal.
At face value it seems similar, but story telling via music without using words (as in opera or musical theater) tends to result in something vastly different.
The cinematographer on Koyaanisqatsi (I forget his name) also directed two films called Baraka and more recently Samsara, which are in the same vein if you're into that kind of thing.
