Lessons with Z. - the coda

This blog started as an attempt to define things for myself while on the path to being a composer. To continue in that vein, I am finally listening to and transcribing excerpts from my lessons with Z. between 2000 and 2004.

fp: Do you have particular strategies when you are coming to the end of a piece, kind of, tools out of the "form" tool box, or something that you draw from?
Z: You know what you don't want?
fp: What?
Z: No, I'm saying - do you know what you don't want? Where do you not want it to go? Well, what do you have? You have and "A," you have a "B"...
fp: I have an "A," I have a "B"...
Z: What are your options?
fp: Well, I could go back and do the "A" again...
Z: ...or you could go to a "C,"..
fp: ...or I could go to a "C"...
Z: ...but if you go to a "C"..
fp: then it has to tie back into the "A."
Z: I think the "A," the "B" and the "A" and then a coda. Now one of the things I sometimes find works out is I do a variation, which gives the illusion that something is the same, but really by changing a note here and there, the ear gets tricked into believing that something new has happened.
...
fp: And you always talked about the coda as something that sums up the piece?
Z: Yeah, it can't seem like something tacked on. Many times, inexpert codas and failure codas, it almost seems like you can see where the scotch tape (claps his hands) is drawing that to that: "I gotta get the hell out of here, I've got to end." I've been there myself. Sometimes I feel I may have done exactly that. Tired, you don't have an idea at the moment, so you throw something there into the breach just to see how it works and that's ok, just as long as you don't commit to it.