Choral Singing in the light of republican ideals and of positivist thinking

The defence of Choral Singing in Portuguese primary schools begins with a moral and civilising objective and, later, with the aim of providing learning support of language. Despite the fact that various intellectuals appealed for its insertion in the school curriculum and proposed a copy of the French model, according to the practice of François-Boquillon Willem, its application was only very sporadic and ephemeral, due to the priority given almost exclusively by the governments of the time to learning how to read, write and count. It was only with the emergence of the republican ideals, beginning in 1880, and the influence that the positivist ideals had on them, that Choral Singing would be put in practice in the school curriculum at the hands of specialists. The ideal that motivated this initiative revealed a preoccupation with the integral education of the child, based on ethical and patriotic principles, at the same time that it very particularly emphasized the hygienic component. The intention of this communication is to discuss the role of Choral Singing as an integral part of the republican ideology that established it in primary education and later in secondary schooling, as well as to analyse in what way the functions that were attributed to it proclaimed the creation of a new citizen who would contribute to the prophylaxis of society. As an analytical tool we will use, as a basis, the positivist knowledge that was associated with the culture of schooling and that had, for those who applied it, the ambition of appropriating the space that resides between the organic and the biological components of the student population.