What Lists of Subscribers Can Tell Us: the Cases of Giacob Basevi Cervetto’s Opp. 1 and 2

Abstract

The Veronese cellist and composer Giacob (Jacob) Basevi Cervetto (c.1690–1783), was the first musician of Jewish birth to achieve success in Britain after the Resettlement of the seventeenth century. The subscription lists for his first two published collections (c. 1740 and 1748, respectively) illustrate the strategies by which he won acceptance within and beyond his adoptive country. Included in the article is a discussion of the nature and significance of publishing music by subscription in eighteenth-century Britain.