Coda
The coda sign, a circle crossed by a vertical and a horizontal line, marks a jump to the coda, the closing section of a piece. When a piece is repeated from the beginning, the player goes as far as the coda sign and then skips to the coda.
How to read it
Coda is Italian for tail. The sign is used with repeats: D.C. e poi la coda means go back to the beginning, play to the coda sign, then skip to the coda. The coda itself is the closing passage added after the main form of a piece is complete.
Look-alikes
The Segno marks where to go back to; the coda sign marks where to leave. Both appear in the same pieces.
Other meanings of coda
Stainer and Barrett’s dictionary (1898) lists older senses of the word as well: the tail of a note, meaning its stem, and a few bars added to close a canon.
More music symbols
Sources
- Music Notation and Terminology, Karl W. Gehrkens, 1914, A. S. Barnes Company (Project Gutenberg), Chapter IV, §39
- Stainer and Barrett's Dictionary of Musical Terms, John Stainer and W. A. Barrett, new and revised edition, 1898, Novello (Internet Archive, Cornell University Library), Coda
- Primer of Facts about Music, M. G. Evans, 1909, Theodore Presser Co. (Internet Archive, University of Toronto), §88
- Elson's Music Dictionary, Louis C. Elson, 1905, Oliver Ditson Company (Internet Archive, Cornell University Library), Da capo e poi la coda
- SMuFL: Repeats, Standard Music Font Layout, glyph table U+E040–U+E04F, W3C Music Notation Community Group, U+E048
Last reviewed September 26, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research