Coda

Coda (Italian for "tail"; from the Latin cauda), in music, a term for a passage which brings a movement[?] or a separate piece to a conclusion. This developed from the simple chords of a cadence into an elaborate and independent form. In a series of variations on a theme or in a composition with a fixed order of subjects, the coda is a passage sufficiently contrasted with the conclusions of the separate variations or subjects, added to form a complete conclusion to the whole. Beethoven raised the coda to a feature of the highest importance.

In music notation, the coda symbol is used as a navigation marker, similarly to the dal Segno[?] sign. It looks like a large O with a + superimposed.

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.

Coda is also the name of an experimental filesystem from Carnegie_Mellon_University.