Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was born Juana Ramirez de Asbaje in either 1648 or 1651 near Mexico City. Due to her grandfather’s extensive library and her strong intellectual drive, she received a thorough education, unusual for a woman of her day. As an adolescent her grandfather died, and she moved to Mexico City where her musical and literary talents endeared her to the Viceroyal Court. Courtly intrigues were not to her liking, however, and at the age of eighteen she joined the Convent of San Gerónimo, where she remained for the rest of her life. The convent had a rich musical life. The sisters practiced and studied the musical arts daily and gave performances. In the near absence of male authority, they had almost total autonomy over the musical environment. Additionally, the rather liberal order allowed Sor Juana to continue to her studies and writing, and she is considered by many to have been the most prominent author of New Spain, male or female. Sor Juana’s exceptional status as an educated and exceptionally talented woman may have enabled her to produce more controversial writings than most men, as authorities did not initially view women as a possible source of dissent. In her insistence that women should be valued equally with men, she directly clashed with the Church. At the same time, she cloaked her feminism within religious expressions of Marian devotion, a practice that may have spared her from the Inquisition. Sor Juana’s wrote prolifically over a short lifespan; she died in 1691, in her early forties. While her theological writings have garnered considerable study and critique, her many villancico compositions are less well known. Between 1676 and 1692, she published at least twenty-two sets of villancicos in Mexico City and Puebla. Churches performed the works throughout Mexico, with music provided by a separate composer.