Christ Church Choir has been busy recording extracts from the Eton Choirbook, a collection of about 50 pieces assembled in the 16th century for use at Eton College. Some have never been recorded before, some never with boys’ voices – as Christ Church director of music Stephen Darlington put it in an Oxford Times interview: “There is a reason why choirs like ours haven’t done much of this repertoire: it’s because it is very, very difficult.” Not that you would necessarily have known this from the two substantial tasters performed in this concert: John Browne’s Stabat Mater, and William Cornysh’s Salve Regina. Sadly, Darlington has an infection, so the pieces were conducted by Clive Driskill-Smith, who gave the Stabat Mater a strong sense of rhythmic drive, while emphasising the devotional feeling of the Salve Regina. Both performances were carefully articulated, and the flow of the musical line was impressively maintained.

Then it was forward 500 years in this Music at Oxford concert, to the Oxford premiere of Howard Goodall’s Eternal Light: A Requiem. Composed last year, this is a collaboration involving Christ Church Choir, London Musici, and the Rambert Dance Company. Traditional Latin text phrases are intermixed with, for example, John McCrae’s haunting war poem In Flanders Fields. Stripped of its dance, and expressive string accompaniment (here replaced by organ, piano, and harp), Eternal Light becomes more spartan. Also, the stirring effect of solo voices soaring over a muted choral background is difficult to achieve in the dead cathedral acoustic.

But this performance, conducted by Mark Stephenson, still packed a powerful punch, not least because Howard Goodall makes no apology for employing memorable, haunting tunes, contrasting rhythms, and immaculately judged milligrams of sentimentality. Particularly moving were the descriptive “Drop, drop, slow tears”, and the concluding “Grant them everlasting peace”.

More Divine than Human, music from the Eton Choirbook, is on the Avie CD label (AV2167). Eternal Light is on EMI Classics (50999 2 15047 2 3).