CODA

(Italian: tail), in musical composition, a concluding passage based, as a general rule, on extensions or reelaborations of a work's or a particular movement's motivic substances; it may also introduce new materials. The origins of the coda go back at least as far as the later European Middle Ages, when special ornamental caudae served to enhance the ends of otherwise relatively simple polyphonic pieces of music. Subsequent instrumental composer-performers tended to embellish final cadences, and soon this practice became conventionalized in the compositional process itself. By the time that W.A. Mozart composed his last symphony (Jupiter, 1788), and in the sonatas, symphonies, and similar works of Ludwig van Beethoven, the coda embodied a second, curtailed development of a movement's principal themes. This marked shift of emphasis to the end of a movement was paralleled by the growing importance attached to the last movement of multimovement instrumental works from Beethoven through Gustav Mahler.