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On\u00a0the afternoon of 5 September 1853, Richard Wagner<\/a><\/strong> slumped exhausted on a couch at his hotel in La Spezia, Italy, where he had gone for mental and musical recuperation. <\/p> Restless and feverish the night before, he had set out on a long walk in the hills that morning, hoping that a period of deep, restful sleep might follow. It didn\u2019t. Instead Wagner \u2018slipped into a kind of drowsy state\u2019, suddenly feeling as though he were \u2018sinking into swiftly flowing water\u2019. From its rushing noise the chord of E flat major emerged \u2018in broken forms\u2019, transforming into \u2018increasingly animated melodic figurations\u2019.<\/p> Imagining ‘the waves were rushing high above my head\u2019, Wagner woke \u2018in sudden terror\u2019 from his dream. He immediately knew that something momentous had happened. \u2018I at once recognised,\u2019 he later wrote, \u2018that the orchestral prelude to\u00a0Rheingold<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, which I had been carrying within me without being able to precisely locate it, had finally risen to the surface.\u2019<\/p>Wagner woke ‘in sudden terror’<\/h2>