Contact
Biography
Tin is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Cultural, Media, and Visual Studies working on SOUNDSHIP: Resounding Ships: Sound and Music of Sacred Sea Travel between Venice and Jerusalem (c. 1450-1650) (project ID number 101205825).
Tin's background lies in music performance, having studied trombone at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana (2012-2017) and historical trombones at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (2017-2019). His earliest research focused on cornetto and trombone within the historical performance movement in Europe (MA, 2017) and the earliest history of trombone playing in early modern Croatia (MA, 2019). He completed his PhD in historical musicology and interdisciplinary cultural studies at the University of Bern in 2024 with a dissertation on the auditory experience of the Mass in early modern Republic of Dubrovnik (1400-1600). During that time, his research focused on various sonic aspects of the past auditory environment, such as sound and political power, silence, and noise.
Tin's research is informed by his ongoing work as a historical trombone specialist. He regularly performs with ensembles across Europe and North America, and serves as artistic director of Ensemble Responsorium (Croatia) and artistic co-director of Swiss-based ensemble canticum trombonorum. He has collaborated widely with period ensembles and orchestras such as Freiburger Barockorchester, Les Cornets Noirs, Profeti della Quinta, Singer Pur, Cardinal Complex, Abendmusiken Basel, Capriccio Barockorchester, Zürcher Sing-Akademie, Hofkapelle München, and Croatian Baroque Ensemble. Recently, he worked with the German ensemble [hanse]Pfeyfferey in co-creating a multisensorial musical performance focusing on the historic city of Bremen.
Expertise Summary
Tin's research expertise lies in historical sound studies, with a focus on the cultural history of sound, silence, and listening in the early modern Adriatic and Mediterranean. His current work explores how sonic and musical practices shaped sacred travel, ritual life, and social order between c. 1400 and 1650, drawing on archival, performative, and ethnographic methods. Tin is particularly interested in how contemporary soundwalking can inform our understanding of the past sensorium.
Feel free to reach out for any sort of collaborative thinking, discussion, or knowledge exchange.
Research Summary
Resounding Ships: Sound and Music of Sacred Sea Travel between Venice and Jerusalem (c. 1450-1650)
The maritime route between Venice and Jerusalem testified to an incredible exchange of thousands of people in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Among these were pilgrimages, which gathered transregional, multiethnic and multireligious communities, brought together through sound in spite of their language, cultural and religious differences. Pilgrims' diaries narrate a sense of community that was initiated and preserved by sound phenomena such as noise and silence, sonic practices such as sounding trumpets or whistles, and various music practices, including chanting. In the current time, marked by intensifying interethnic, intercultural and religious tensions, my project advocates for and fosters multicultural cohesion within modern society.
Despite being naturally prominent in general early modern travel, sound's meaning for the travelling community remains under-researched, and has rarely been considered within in-between, transitional spaces of mobility and cultural exchange. SOUNDSHIP offers a new, far more more nuanced understanding of sound perception in early modern communities, their formation and preservation, and will be the first systematic study of sound and music in early modern travel. It will do so through an innovative application of sound studies, auditory history, historical musicology, religious studies, and performance practice research on pilgrims' narratives, philosophical, music, medical treatises, and music practices.
Selected Publications
TIN CUGELJ, 2026. Thunder, Songs, and Whistles: Ad-hoc Communities of Early Modern Pilgrimage. In: ASCENSIÓN MAZUELA ANGUITA, ed., Medieval and Early Modern Soundscapes UK: Boydell and Brewer. (In Press.)
TIN CUGELJ, 2026. Listening to Noise of Early Modern Dubrovnik. In: DAVID BRYANT, LUIGI COLLARILE and MICHELE MAGNABOSCO, eds., The Soundscape of the Venetian Territories in the Early Modern Era: Celebrating 475 Years of the Accademia Filarmonica of Verona Turnhout: Brepols. (In Press.)
2026. Building Community Through Sound: An Acoustemological (Re)Reading of Felix Faber’s Evagatorium (1481-1484) Studies in Travel Writing: Special Issue: Sound and Travel Writing. (In Press.)
2026. Dicta Domini Rectoris: najraniji troškovi dubrovačkoga Kneževa Dvora kao glazbenopovijesni izvor (1543-1589): [Dicta Domini Rectoris: The Earliest Expenses of Ragusan Rector's Palace as a Source for Sound and Music History (1543-1589)] Vjesnik dalmatinskih arhiva: Izvori i prilozi za povijest Dalmacije. 6(1), (In Press.)
Tin is a co-founder and co-chair of the International Musicological Society Study Group Auditory History, a growing international network of scholars interested in how people experienced, structured, and reflected on sound and listening in the past. The group promotes interdisciplinary dialogue across musicology, history, anthropology, and sound studies, with regular activities including lectures, workshops, and reading groups. Our aim is to explore and historicise the cultural practices of hearing and sounding, and to consider how they shape our understanding of past societies. You can find out more, including how to join, on our website: https://auditoryhistory.musicology.org.
IMS SG AH Inaugural Conference | The Historical Ear: What is Auditory History?, 18-21 March 2026, University of Chicago John W. Boyer Centre x Sorbonne University, Paris, France. For more, see http://auditoryhistory.musicology.org/conference
Past Research
Tin's past research has focused on the auditory cultures of early modern Dubrovnik and the Adriatic, combining archival work with historical sound studies and performance-based insights. His doctoral dissertation, Auditory Experience of the Mass in Early Modern Dubrovnik (University of Bern, 2024), investigated how sound and listening shaped religious life, ritual expression, and social structure in the Republic of Dubrovnik between 1400 and 1600. Alongside this work, he has published and presented on topics such as noise and silence in urban space, sonic expressions of political power, the performance of the Mass, and early trombone practices in Croatia. These projects reflect his broader commitment to developing interdisciplinary methodologies at the intersection of musicology, cultural history, and sensory studies.
Future Research
Tin has a growing interest in the sonic practices of temporary, intercultural, and transspatial communities in the early modern world. His future research will explore how sound shaped experiences of mobility, encounter, and boundary-making across diverse spaces and scales. Concurrently, he is interested in expanding the methods of historical sound studies by integrating digital, performative, and comparative approaches, with the aim of rethinking how we understand early modern connectivity, identity, and sensory life.