A concluding part of our work

The main reason why dessert is reserved for last in the meal is to leave you with a sweet flavour to conclude your experience. Even though it is usually the smallest dish served, it’s the one you remember the best because it was not only the last but distinct in taste. Perhaps this is why cultures all around the world mark the end of their meals with a coda of delightful treats.

A coda is the final section to something. While this ordinarily brief ending, originally (and still predominantly) pertained to movements or whole pieces of music, coda has since been appropriated to describe the trailing portion of anything. Outside of its technical musical usage, it is usually applied to verbal or written presentations, or events or ceremonies of some kind. Whether it is a decadent dessert, a flourish ending to a symphony, the name of the last album of your band, a lucid summary of your PhD thesis or the dance of the bride and groom at the end of a wedding – Coda is the last but not the least.

In music, a coda is a term you would hear a lot, especially when talking about classical music like sonatas or symphonies. Coda comes from the Latin word cauda, which means “tail”. A coda is a passage at the end of a piece of music that brings the music to a close. In the song “Hey Jude” by The Beatles, the final “nana na na” part is considered a coda, and it is almost four minutes long.

Coda serves to add a more emphatic ending to a piece, to let the audience know that it is really ending.