In Merton College gardens, sunlight filtered gently through the daffodils, lighting them from behind, and giving them a yellow glow. Blossom was just beginning to appear on the trees. The sound of early Tudor church music wafted across the grass from the college chapel, adding to the centuries-old atmosphere. For on this particular spring afternoon Christ Church Cathedral Choir had moved in to record a new CD of music selected from the Eton Choirbook, a collection of about 50 pieces collected together at the beginning of the 16th century for use at Eton College.

“We’re not absolutely together at the beginning of verse two,” purred a voice through a loudspeaker, a voice that carried all the calm authority of a senior airline captain. The voice belonged to the recording producer, David Trendell (pictured below). Visiting him later in his control room set up in the chapel vestry, it was somehow reassuring to see that he still pinged a good, old-fashioned tuning fork to make sure that the choir was singing at the correct pitch, never mind the high-tech equipment set up all around him. Back in the chapel itself, Christ Church director of music Stephen Darlington had his own comment to add: “You’re holding on slightly grimly”.

Time to go for another take. “Aeroplane,” announced the loudspeaker. Several seconds later, the sound of a plane could indeed just be heard passing high overhead.

Unsurprisingly, there was a determination to get everything just right, for this CD blazes a new trail.

“This repertoire has never been recorded before using boys’ voices,” Stephen Darlington explained afterwards. “In fact the piece you’ve just been listening to, the Magnificat by Walter Lambe, hasn’t ever been recorded in any form before. There is a reason why choirs like ours haven’t done much of this repertoire: it’s because it is very, very difficult.”

Nodding vigorously in agreement at the “very, very difficult” description were choristers Ben Laxton, 13, and Nicholas Savage, 11, as Darlington continued: “There are wonderful recordings out there of professional, mixed voice choirs doing this repertoire. But what I wanted to do was to try and get my group to tackle it with boys, which after all is how this music was originally performed.

“I thought it was important that we included some of those pieces which are really well known, like the Stabat Mater by John Browne, and the Salve Regina by William Cornysh, but I also wanted to find some pieces that haven’t been done before.”

All the texts are in Latin, so I wondered if that presented a problem to the choristers?

“I don’t do Latin at school any more. I stopped doing it because I was awful,” Ben replied, while Nick admitted that he’s quite good at Latin, and still studies it. “As long as you know the pronunciation of the words, that’s all that really matters,” Nick added. “But it’s nice to know whether it’s got to be loud because they’re shouting something, if a crowd is taunting someone for instance. You’ve got to take that into account. It’s quite good fun singing really loudly at times,” said Ben, “Although it’s nice to have some quiet sections as well. If you’re describing crying, it’s got to be quiet. But “Crucify him” is a fun phrase to sing, especially in German.”

Life for Christ Church Choir doesn’t entirely consist of making pioneer early music recordings, and singing Evensong in the Cathedral. A longstanding collaboration with composer and Christ Church alumnus Howard Goodall (pictured right) means that the choir is to be heard delivering the theme music to TV’s Mr Bean and The Vicar of Dibley. More recently it has collaborated with London Musici and the Rambert Dance Company in Eternal Light: A Requiem, for which Howard Goodall won the Composer of the Year title at the recent Classical Brit Awards.

There has also been a long tradition of co-operation between Christ Church Cathedral Choir and the Oxfordshire County Music Service, which has recently been formalised as part of the Government's Sing Up campaign. For the last three years, groups of Cathedral Choristers have been going into local primary schools with Christ Church Cathedral School and OCMS staff to work with children and teachers, promoting singing and helping to raise standards. To Stephen Darlington, all these activities are part of one picture.

“The way I see it is that you are working creatively with people in each case. You’re trying to draw out a musical experience for a group of people. You can do that – as we were – in Bermuda in January with a Seventh-day Adventist gospel choir, or you can be singing music from the late 15th century. The spirit of the enterprise is the same: I’m thinking of the way that music can build contact between communities, normal barriers don’t apply in music. What I like about the job I do is that there are constantly new challenges.”

Music from the Eton Choirbook, and the Oxford premiere of Eternal Light will be presented in concert in by the Choir in Christ Church Cathedral on Saturday. Box Office: 0870 7500659 or www.musicatoxford.com The CD is entitled More Divine than Human: Music from the Eton Choirbook, and is on the Avie label (AV2167).