In Portugal, the institutionalised practice of choral singing outside scholar curricula and religious scope has a crescent and significant expression revealed by hundreds of groups identified and characterised by this research. These groups mobilize around choral singing practice thousands of individuals, from singers to composers, conductors, ethnographers, among others. 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? The complexity represented by that multidimensional, dynamic and contingent reality demands different approaches and methodologies. So, we developed an extensive survey to more than one thousand choral groups, sustained both on previous quantitative and qualitative data as well as the integration of the data at different stages of the research process (Mixed methods). The main objective 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. This article focus 3 dimensions: the choral groups, their elements and the musical repertoire. We also discuss the “in place paradigm” as well as the dimension of this movement properly covered by the national statistics or central cultural policies.

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Amateur choral singing