Scott Cantrell

For four and a half centuries, a choir of men and boys has been singing beneath the glorious fan-vaulted ceiling of King's College Chapel at Cambridge University. Today, thanks to broadcasts, recordings and international tours, King's College Choir is one of the most famous in the world.

Tonight, the choir begins a nine-city U.S. tour in Dallas, at the Cathedral Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Led by Stephen Cleobury, its director since 1982, the choir will perform motets by Bach, Poulenc and the Tudor-period Englishmen Thomas Weelkes, Thomas Tomkins and Orlando Gibbons. The program also includes works by 20th-century Englishmen Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells and Lennox Berkeley and a new carol commissioned last year from Brett Dean. The local appearance is sponsored by Southern Methodist University's Perkins School of Theology.

Probably no choir anywhere goes through as much challenging choral repertory in any given week as King's. The schedule includes full choral services, each with a lot of music, six days a week. Even with daily rehearsals, the singers need to be quick studies.

On a Sunday morning, you may hear a complete mass setting by Palestrina or Stravinsky. At Evensong the core of the repertory is British, from Thomas Tallis and William Byrd to contemporary composers including John Tavener and Judith Weir.

The 16 boys, ages 9 to 13, are educated at King's College School. Alto, tenor and bass parts are sung by 14 Cambridge University undergraduates, with a variety of majors. Two organ scholars do much of the service playing.

In centuries before women were admitted to church choirs, much of the great sacred choral repertory was composed for men and boys.

"Obviously, with young voices you don't get quite the range of color and dynamic that you might expect from adult sopranos," Mr. Cleobury says. "On the other hand, you do get in many cases a blend and integration of sound, because they are younger voices, and they haven't in most cases developed an individuality of sound."

For years, the Cambridge choirs at King's and St. John's colleges represented tonal opposites: King's precisely focused, unforced, satin-finished; St. John's bolder, earthier, more like boys' choirs on the European continent.

"But the sounds of choirs change," says the soft-spoken Mr. Cleobury, who as a Cambridge undergraduate was an organ scholar at St. John's. "We do an annual service with St. John's in the summer, which has been going on since the 1960s. I would say the sound of those two choirs has become more similar than they were."

A major factor in the King's sound is the luscious acoustics of the college chapel, one of the most spectacular worship spaces anywhere.

"People assume that King's Chapel is easy to sing in," Mr. Cleobury says, "because it has that glorious reverberation. But if a sound is going to echo around for four seconds or so, you have to make sure it's a decent sound you're sending out."

Plan your life Thursday at 7:30 at Cathedral Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, 2215 Ross Ave. $28. 214-373-8000, www.ticketmaster.com.