Isabella Leonarda (1620 - 1704), a nun who spent her entire life inside a Catholic convent from the age of 16, was a prolific composer of the Baroque era, composing nearly 200 works. Her success came despite male-dominated norms of the period, which often barred women from performing religious music.
This episode marks the directorial debut of Tobias Datum. Tobias has been the cinematographer of the show since the beginning of season 2.
Carlo Gesualdo was known for his boundary-stretching choral writing, including the famous madrigal "Moro, lasso, al mio duolo." His significant artistic accomplishments, however, are clouded by history: notoriously, he brutally murdered his first wife in 1590 after finding her in bed with an aristocrat, a common practice at the time in Italy when a wife was discovered to be cuckolding her husband.
Luigi Denza's catchy tune (he having also written the lyrics) was written to celebrate the opening of a funicular cable car up Mount Vesuvius in 1880. Over the years, however, "Funiculì, Funiculà" has been used by notable composers (including Richard Strauss and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov) who may have believed the work to be a traditional, Neapolitan folk song. Arnold Schönberg's (legal) arrangement of the Denza song can be heard on the Seinfeld (1989) episode, The Maestro (1995).
Flowerpots are instruments of choice for Caroline Shaw, who cites her "appreciation of the pedestrian, utilitarian, everyday object" and their relationship to ritual and meditation. In addition to appearing in the work of John Cage, other flower pot admirers include composers Frederic Rzewski and David Lang.