THE Sixteen, under founder-director Harry Christophers, have made themselves a national institution by virtue of their annual Choral Pilgrimage, this year reaching 33 venues, mainly cathedrals, throughout the realm. Their sojourn in the largest of these, York Minster, has also become a vital pillar in the Early Music Festival.

Saturday’s programme, The Deer’s Cry, which drew the usual large and discerning throng, linked the music of Arvo Pärt with that of Tallis and Byrd whose techniques and sound-world it closely resembles, give or take a few tweaks of modernity. The title piece uses the penultimate verse (‘Christ within me’) of Saint Patrick’s Breastplate. Pärt begins and ends it pianissimo, with an anguished, pleading climax at its core – all supremely controlled here.

After the perfect palindrome of Byrd’s Diliges Dominum, his hymn Christe Qui Lux Es sounded mildly ponderous in this lively acoustic. Not so the 8-voice Ad Dominum cum Tribularer, whose dissonance symbolises a turbulent conscience: The Sixteen wrang every last drop from its clashes of major and minor.

Still more lively was Byrd’s Laetentur Coeli, whose first half truly danced, before the chastened ending. O Lux Beata Trinitas made an exciting contrast with Part’s hushed Nunc Dimittis, with its huge expansion on ‘Light’ at its centre. The Sixteen carried their Rolls Royce form into the mighty final Tribue. Domine (‘Grant, Lord’) where subtle variations in dynamic brought individual phrases magically out of the texture. Truly The Sixteen are the gold standard of choral music.