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St. Mary's Trumpet Call

musical composition

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ724778
Source-derived summary

St. Mary's Trumpet Call (Polish: Hejnał mariacki; Polish pronunciation: [xɛjnaw], derived from the Hungarian expression Szűz Mária hajnala meaning "Virgin Mary's dawn") is a traditional, five-note Polish bugle call closely bound to the history and traditions of Kraków. It is played every hour on the hour, four times in succession in each of the four cardinal directions, by a trumpeter on the highest tower of the city's Saint Mary's Church. The noon performance is broadcast via radio to all of Poland and the world.

History

Origins

The real origin and author of the hejnał are unknown. The earliest written mention of it appears in civic pay records of 1392. The word hejnał comes from hajnal, the Hungarian word for "dawn". These two facts fit well with a putative origin under King Louis I "the Hungarian" (r. in Poland 1370–1382) or his daughter Jadwiga, Queen of Poland (r. 1384–1399).

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “St. Mary's Trumpet Call” is musical composition. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Mary's, Trumpet and Call, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1392, 1370, 1382, 1384—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Mary's, Trumpet and Call is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “musical composition” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q724778. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1392, 1370, 1382 and 1384.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “St. Mary's Trumpet Call”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow St. Mary's Trumpet Call primary sources, St. Mary's Trumpet Call archive and Mary's research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “St. Mary's Trumpet Call”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from St. Mary's Trumpet Call” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.