"The musician sets a picture to music," proclaimed Robert Schumann (page 216). This elegant statement perfectly describes the purpose of program music. The job of a composer who writes program music is to vividly paint a colorful picture with their music. The composer then must also effectively communicate what the meaning behind the music is that way the audience can fully appreciate the depth of the music. An ideal example of program music would be Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. In Movement IV, after reading and understanding the program, we can listen to the music and watch as it paints us an expressive picture: we clearly visualize the march to the scaffold, perceive the soft, gentleness of the last thought of love, and jump back
