In Portugal, in 2012, the institutionalized practice of choral singing outside scholar curricula and religious scope has a significant expression revealed by hundreds of groups identified and characterized by this research. These groups mobilize around choral singing practice thousands of individuals, from singers to composers, conductors, ethnographers, among others. In recent years, new media technologies also contribute to increase the dynamism of this practice. The complexity represented by that multidimensional, dynamic and contingent reality demands different approaches and methodologies. Who are the agents of this choral institutionalized practice? What have they in common? What are the social contexts and spaces of their performances? What musical repertoires do they perform? Those are the main issues of this research. Considering the diversity of institutions, agents and musical repertoires I developed a extensive survey to more than one thousand choral groups and choral conductors, sustained both on previous quantitative and qualitative data as well as the integration of the data at different stages in the process of research (Mixed methods). The main objective of this survey was to gather contextual data to a better understanding of the choral singing practice in the beginning of the 21st century and provide a large broad of information for future studies. The research allowed to obtain: (1) a general characterization of those institutions, their geographical distribution, musical repertoires, variety of activities that they maintain and the social profile of choral singers and conductors, (2) the identification of trends in musical repertoire, contexts and spaces of choir performances.

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