The phrase ‘wrong notes’ has become closely associated with the musical style of Sergei Prokofiev since Patricia Ashley used it in her 1963 dissertation on the composer. It captures the sense that certain chromatic notes invade the otherwise tonally coherent musical surface to which they do not belong, which instantly raises two theoretical questions: how can the alien chromaticisms be reconciled with the familiar tonal context, and what implications does this have for Prokofiev’s musical style?
Three different scholars – Richard Bass, Neil Minturn and Deborah Rifkin – have produced theoretical accounts proceeding along this line of enquiry in Anglo‑American musicological literature, drawing either on Schenkerian or pitch‑class set theories. These explain Prokofiev’s ‘wrong notes’ as constituents of the phenomena of ‘chromatic displacement’, ‘structural sets’ and ‘structural motifs’, respectively. While their methodologies differ, all three accounts propose that Prokofiev’s music should be understood as perturbed or enriched by ‘wrong notes’.