After an eighteen-month period of writer's block, Adams wrote his three-movement, orchestral piece "Harmonielehre" (1984–85), which he described as "a statement of belief in the power of tonality at a time when I was uncertain about its future." As with many of Adams' pieces, it was inspired by a dream, in this case, a dream in which he was driving across the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and saw an oil tanker on the surface of the water abruptly turn upright and take off like a Saturn V rocket.