This thesis examines the reception of Wagner's music dramas through the prism of musical reworkings by arrangers and transcribers during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Published in myriad types of sheet music, these pieces were consumed by a wide range of European and North American audiences—a much larger public than his operas saw on stage. This study contextualizes sheet music arrangements in an effort to shed light on the experiences of domestic Wagner audiences, articulating a history of "domestic reception" distinct from traditional Wagner reception scholarship.

By recasting Wagner's music in forms suited for new performance contexts, arrangements subverted the composer's agenda of opera reform, opened access to Wagner's music, and permitted excerpts of his dramas to acquire new meanings and modes of listening independent of dramatic context. Through the process of consumption, Wagner's music was thus domesticated and democratized.