Barbara Strozzi was born out of wedlock in 1619 Venice, raised a family without ever marrying, and had no church or court backing. Yet she published more printed secular vocal music than any composer in her city, man or woman. This episode explores how she navigated a society designed to keep her silent and engineered an unprecedented independent career.

We follow her upbringing in the household of poet and librettist Giulio Strozzi, a power player in the Accademia degli Incogniti, and her survival of the plague that killed a third of Venice. We look at her composition lessons with Francesco Cavalli, the Accademia degli Unisoni her father founded as a stage for her, her fraught relationship with nobleman Giovanni Paolo Vidman, and the loan at nearly 10 percent interest she structured to protect her children. Finally, we examine how her eight published volumes let her subvert gender expectations in pieces like Lagrime mie and secured her rediscovery centuries later.

• Why Venetian women were confined to marriage, the convent, or life as a courtesan
• The debate over whether Giulio Strozzi was a nurturing father or a shrewd promoter
• How a dissonant lamento bass and demanding vocal lines turned a weeping lament into a display of strength
• The motet Mater Anna as both religious devotion and a targeted pitch to Archduchess Anna de’ Medici
• Her death in Padua in 1677 without a will and the late 20th-century revival of her music