Coda (music)

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Coda (music)

Coda (Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance languages spoken by about 63 million people as a first language, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four Linguistic geography of Switzerlands....
for "tail"; from the Latin

Latin

Music

Music is an art form whose media is sound organized in time. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics , and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture ....
in a number of different senses, primarily to designate a passage which brings a piece (or one movement

Movement (music)

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession....
thereof) to a conclusion.

Coda as a section of a movement
The presence of a coda as a structural element in a music movement is especially clear in works written in particular musical form

Musical form

The term musical form refers to two related concepts:*the type of composition *the structure of a particular musical piece .There is some overlap between musical form and musical genre....
s. In a sonata form

Sonata form

Sonata form is a musical form that has been used widely since the early Classical music era. While it is typically used in the first Movement of multimovement pieces, it is sometimes employed in subsequent movements as well....
movement, the recapitulation

Recapitulation (music)

In music theory, the recapitulation is one of the section s of a movement written in sonata form. The recapitulation occurs after the movement's musical development section, and typically presents once more the musical themes from the movement's exposition ....
section will generally follow the exposition

Exposition (music)

In musical form and musical analysis, exposition is the initial presentation of the theme material of a musical composition, movement , or section ....
in its thematic content, while adhering to the home key

Key (music)

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Encyclopedia

Coda (Italian

Italian language

Latin

Music

Movement (music)

Coda as a section of a movement

The presence of a coda as a structural element in a music movement is especially clear in works written in particular musical form

Musical form

Sonata form

Recapitulation (music)

Exposition (music)

Key (music)

In music theory, the term key is used in many different and sometimes contradictory ways. A common use is to speak of music as being "in" a certain key, such as in the key of C or in the key of F-sharp....
. The recapitulation often ends with a passage that sounds like a termination, paralleling the music that ended the exposition; thus any music coming after this termination will be perceived as extra material; i.e. as a coda. In works in variation

Variation (music)

In music, variation is a formal technique where material is altered during repetition: reiteration with changes. The changes may involve harmony, melody, counterpoint, rhythm, timbre or orchestration....
form, the coda occurs following the last variation and will be very noticeable as the first music not based on the theme.

Codas were commonly used in both sonata form and variation movements during the Classical era

Classical period (music)

The dates of the Classical period in Western music are generally accepted as 1750 to 1825. However, the term classical music is used colloquially to describe a variety of Western musical styles from the 9th century to the present....
. One of the ways that Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. He was a crucial figure in the transitional period between the Classical music era and Romantic music eras in classical music, and remains one of the most acclaimed and influential composers of all time....
extended and intensified Classical practice was to expand the coda sections, producing a final section sometimes of equal musical weight to the foregoing exposition, development and recapitulation sections and completing the musical argument. For one famous example, see Symphony No. 8 (Beethoven)

Symphony No. 8 (Beethoven)

Symphony No. 8 in F Major, Opus number. 93 is a symphony in four movement s composed by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1812. Beethoven fondly referred to it as "my little Symphony in F", distinguishing it from his Symphony No....
.

The musical function of codas

Charles Burkhart (2005, 12) suggests that the reason codas are common, even necessary, is that in the climax of the main body of a piece a "particularly effortful passage", often an expanded phrase

Phrase (music)

In music a phrase is a section of music that is relatively self contained and coherent over a medium time scale. In common practice, phrases are often four and most often eight bar s, or Measure s, long....
, is often created by "working an idea through to its structural conclusions" and that after all this momentum is created a coda is required to "look back" on the main body, allow listeners to "take it all in", and "create a sense of balance."

In music notation

In music notation, the coda symbol is used as a navigation marker, similarly to the dal Segno
Dal Segno

In music notation, Dal Segno is used as a navigation marker. From Italian language for "from the sign," D.S. appears in sheet music and instructs a musician to repeat a passage starting from the sign shown at right, sometimes called the "segno" in English....
sign. It looks like a set of crosshairs. It is encountered mainly in transcriptions of popular music, and is used where the exit from a repeated section is within that section rather than at the end. The instruction "To Coda" indicated that the performer is to jump to the separate section headed with the symbol. This symbol is not normally found in works by classical composers such as Haydn or Mozart but in more modern scores for a concert band or jazz big band.

Cauda

Cauda, the Latin root of coda, is used in the study of conductus

Conductus

In medieval music, conductus is a type of sacred, but non-liturgical vocal composition for one or more voices. The word derives from Latin conducere , and the conductus was most likely sung while the lectionary was carried from its place of safekeeping to the place from which it was to be read....
of the 12th and 13th centuries. The cauda was a long melisma

Melisma

Melisma, in music, is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is referred to as melismatic, as opposed to syllabic, where each syllable of text is matched to a single note....
on one of the last syllables of the text, repeated in each strophe. Conducti were traditionally divided into two groups, conductus cum cauda and conductus sine cauda (Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
: "conductus with cauda", "conductus without cauda"), based on the presence of the melisma. The cauda thus provided a conclusionary role, also similar to the modern coda.

Codetta

Codetta (Italian

Italian language

Diminutive

In language structure, a diminutive, or diminutive form, is a formation of a word used to convey a slight degree of the root meaning, smallness of the object or quality named, encapsulation, intimacy, or endearment....
form) has a similar purpose to the coda, but on a smaller scale, concluding a section of a work instead of the work as a whole. Typically, a codetta concludes the exposition

Exposition

Exposition may refer to*Exposition , a different type of Dramatic structure#Exposition in which undepicted plots elements are conveyed in dialogue, description, flashback or narrative...
and recapitulation

Recapitulation (music)

Sonata form

Modulation (music)

In music, modulation is most commonly the act or process of changing from one key to another. This may or may not be accompanied by a change in key signature....
) theme, or the closing theme (if there is one). Thus, in the exposition, it usually appears in the secondary key, but in the recapitulation, in the primary key. The codetta ordinarily closes with a perfect cadence in the appropriate key, confirming the tonality. If the exposition is repeated, the codetta is also, but sometimes it has its ending slightly changed, depending on whether it leads back to the exposition or into the development

Musical development

In European classical music, musical development is a process by which a musical idea is communicated in the course of a piece. It refers to the Transformation and Theme of initial material, and is often contrasted with musical Variation , which is a slightly different means to the same end....
sections.

Codas in popular music

Many songs in rock

Rock music

Rock music is a loosely defined genre of popular music that entered the mainstream in the mid 1950's. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rhythm and blues, country music and other influences....
and other genres of popular music

Popular music

Popular music is music that is accessible to the mainstream and disseminated by one or more of the mass media. It belongs to any of a number of musical genres, and stands in contrast to classical music, which historically was the music of the elite and upper strata of society, and traditional music which was disseminated orally....
have sections identifiable as codas. A coda in these genres is sometimes referred to as an outro and in jazz and modern church music as a tag. See also fade out

Fade (audio engineering)

In audio engineering, a fade is a gradual increase or decrease in the level of an audio signal. The term can also be used for lighting in theatre, in much the same way....
.