Photos by Lawrence Sumulong for The Frick Collection © 2025
A BLACK MASQUE
"highbrow and brilliant" — New York Magazine
“Ingeniously setting some of Jonson’s song lyrics... The program made the point about the racist subject without being excessively didactic... A thought-provoking hour, offering new contextual insight into period music and art that we think we know.” — Heidi Waleson, The Wall Street Journal
“Sonnambula produced a rich sound… expressive and stylish … rich with aching dissonances and chiaroscuro harmonies... Tines was absolutely magnetic throughout.” — Andrew Farach-Colton, The Financial Times
“The ensemble played with excitement and curiosity... careful and in-depth excavation of the historical context... Sonnambula’s chemistry ... transport[ed] one to another realm entirely." — Jennifer Pyron, OperaWire
"Bravura work... sublime performance by the early music specialists of Sonnambula with the exquisite presence of bass-baritone Tines." — Richard Sasanow, Broadway World
“Ingeniously setting some of Jonson’s song lyrics... The program made the point about the racist subject without being excessively didactic... A thought-provoking hour, offering new contextual insight into period music and art that we think we know.” — Heidi Waleson, The Wall Street Journal
“Sonnambula produced a rich sound… expressive and stylish … rich with aching dissonances and chiaroscuro harmonies... Tines was absolutely magnetic throughout.” — Andrew Farach-Colton, The Financial Times
“The ensemble played with excitement and curiosity... careful and in-depth excavation of the historical context... Sonnambula’s chemistry ... transport[ed] one to another realm entirely." — Jennifer Pyron, OperaWire
"Bravura work... sublime performance by the early music specialists of Sonnambula with the exquisite presence of bass-baritone Tines." — Richard Sasanow, Broadway World
A Black Masque is a work of performance art by Elizabeth Weinfield and Davóne Tines that premiered at the Frick Collection concert series on Nov. 2, 2025. Would you like to see it in your space? Contact us.
Note on the Program
Our performance is inspired by The Masque of Blackness (1605), an allegorical court entertainment in verse and music, the first of many collaborations between poet Ben Jonson (1572–1637), designer Inigo Jones (1573–1652). and composer Alfonso Ferrabosco II (1575–1628). A complex piece of English Renaissance theater commissioned by Anne of Denmark, Queen Consort to King James I of England and Scotland, it is brimming with instructions for gesture, stage setting, and costumery, as well as details about music and song. much of which is now lost.
The Masque of Blackness has rarely been produced since its first performance at Whitehall in the year it was written, undoubtedly due to the fact that it embodies the racially laden fantasies and anxieties of the early modern British world. In Jonson's telling, African sea nymphs, originally portrayed by the queen and her ladies-in-waiting in blackface, journey to England seeking absolution of their dark skin by British cultivation. Following a performance of song and dance, the nymphs plunge into the sea, commencing their journey to Britain. (They ultimately achieve their promised transformation in Jonson's sequel masque, The Masque of Beauty of 1608.)
Because most of the music from the original Masque of Blackness is lost, the work is remembered primarily as a literary piece. Ample detail about the music survives, as does the singular song "Come Away" by Ferrabosco, who Jonson called "a Man, planted by himselfe, & mastring all the spirits of Musique." In our performance, we draw on some of Ferrabosco's extant instrumental dances and those by other contemporaneous contributors to the Jacobean musical tradition, chief among them, John Dowland, William Brade, and John Coprario. We preserve three of the four masquing tune texts, which we present here as contrafacta* (vocal music with replaced text and metrical structure preserved) when necessary. The spoken text is presented in unaltered form, cut down from a total of 321 lines of verse.
In staging A Black Masque as a contemporary collaboration between a scholar/performer of Renaissance music and a singer/creator with a devotion to socially engaged music making, we address the ongoing work of anti-racist practice within early modern performance-instead of canceling cultural artifacts that challenge us. Our Black Masque interrogates how early modern culture participated in and helped construct ideologies of race that persist today. In the context of live performance, the work becomes our own continuing effort as performers to present a living archive and an invitation to audiences to draw their own conclusions.
— Elizabeth Weinfield and Davóne Tines
*Contrafacta editions prepared by James Kennerley
Lighting design and production by Mary Ellen Stebbins
Note on the Program
Our performance is inspired by The Masque of Blackness (1605), an allegorical court entertainment in verse and music, the first of many collaborations between poet Ben Jonson (1572–1637), designer Inigo Jones (1573–1652). and composer Alfonso Ferrabosco II (1575–1628). A complex piece of English Renaissance theater commissioned by Anne of Denmark, Queen Consort to King James I of England and Scotland, it is brimming with instructions for gesture, stage setting, and costumery, as well as details about music and song. much of which is now lost.
The Masque of Blackness has rarely been produced since its first performance at Whitehall in the year it was written, undoubtedly due to the fact that it embodies the racially laden fantasies and anxieties of the early modern British world. In Jonson's telling, African sea nymphs, originally portrayed by the queen and her ladies-in-waiting in blackface, journey to England seeking absolution of their dark skin by British cultivation. Following a performance of song and dance, the nymphs plunge into the sea, commencing their journey to Britain. (They ultimately achieve their promised transformation in Jonson's sequel masque, The Masque of Beauty of 1608.)
Because most of the music from the original Masque of Blackness is lost, the work is remembered primarily as a literary piece. Ample detail about the music survives, as does the singular song "Come Away" by Ferrabosco, who Jonson called "a Man, planted by himselfe, & mastring all the spirits of Musique." In our performance, we draw on some of Ferrabosco's extant instrumental dances and those by other contemporaneous contributors to the Jacobean musical tradition, chief among them, John Dowland, William Brade, and John Coprario. We preserve three of the four masquing tune texts, which we present here as contrafacta* (vocal music with replaced text and metrical structure preserved) when necessary. The spoken text is presented in unaltered form, cut down from a total of 321 lines of verse.
In staging A Black Masque as a contemporary collaboration between a scholar/performer of Renaissance music and a singer/creator with a devotion to socially engaged music making, we address the ongoing work of anti-racist practice within early modern performance-instead of canceling cultural artifacts that challenge us. Our Black Masque interrogates how early modern culture participated in and helped construct ideologies of race that persist today. In the context of live performance, the work becomes our own continuing effort as performers to present a living archive and an invitation to audiences to draw their own conclusions.
— Elizabeth Weinfield and Davóne Tines
*Contrafacta editions prepared by James Kennerley
Lighting design and production by Mary Ellen Stebbins
Photos by Lawrence Sumulong for The Frick Collection © 2025