Sir Stephen Cleobury, who has died of cancer aged 70, was director of music at King’s College, Cambridge, in charge of one of the world’s best known choirs, from 1982 until his retirement earlier this year. He continued the 500-year tradition of choral music at King’s, following on from his immediate predecessors AH Mann, Boris Ord, Sir David Willcocks and Sir Philip Ledger.

In an institution associated with gradual evolution rather than revolutionary upheaval, Cleobury’s major contribution to progress was his incorporation of contemporary music into the choir’s repertoire, especially his commissioning of a new carol each year for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, broadcast live on BBC radio on Christmas Eve. Leading composers who have written new work for the service include Thomas Adès, John Tavener, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Harrison Birtwistle.

Indeed, it was following the inclusion of Birtwistle’s The Gleam, calling for stamping feet and shouts from the choristers, in 2003 that Cleobury received a missive that read: “Whoever commissioned that carol should be locked in a darkened room and never let out.” The offender was not only unrepentant but proud that he was responsible for contemporary music being broadcast round the globe. He conducted his last Christmas Eve service in 2018, the 100th anniversary of the event, with a new carol by Judith Weir, master of the Queen’s music.

In his parallel career as chief conductor of the BBC Singers, from 1995 to 2007, Cleobury also had plentiful opportunities to perform music by such composers as James MacMillan, Giles Swayne, Ed Cowie and Francis Grier. At Cambridge he initiated two successful ventures: Easter at King’s and Concerts at King’s, the latter a year-round series attracting top performers such as Gerald Finley (a former King’s choral scholar), Bryn Terfel, Alison Balsom and Andreas Scholl, as well as leading ensembles including the Academy of Ancient Music, Monteverdi Choir and Vienna Boys’ Choir.

While the commissioning of new music may have been the most obvious innovation at King’s, Cleobury made subtle adjustments also to the choir’s declamation. In the Willcocks era, the chanting of psalms had come to sound, to many ears, mannered and precious, particularly with regard to rhythms and vowels: phrases such as “is now and ever shell be” and “he maketh the clouds his cheriot” habitually wafted around the fan vaulting.

Under Cleobury, vowels evolved in accordance with developments in received pronunciation. At the same time he continued to emphasise the importance of consonants, aware that they did not enjoy an ideal prominence in the speech of the average modern chorister. He instituted singing lessons for the boys early on and the extra heft with which the choral sound was imbued allowed him to explore repertory beyond the traditional range, including Kodály, Janácek, Górecki, Pärt, Tavener and Rachmaninov. Since 2012 the choir has released recordings under its own label.

Cleobury retired in September this year. At one of his final evensongs, in June, some 140 choristers, including many former choral and organ scholars, combined to pay a moving tribute.

In the Bleak Midwinter, sung by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, conducted by Stephen Cleobury

He was born in Bromley, Kent, the son of John, a physician at Bromley hospital, and Brenda (nee Randall), who had been a nurse there. His brother, Nicholas, also became a conductor and their sister, Julia, a professional musician and peripatetic teacher. Stephen and Nicholas auditioned as trebles for the choir of Worcester Cathedral, where the organist was Douglas Guest, an event that “changed the course of our lives”, Stephen later recalled.

While generally avoiding games (except for cricket, which he enjoyed) and suffering from an environment he experienced as anti-intellectual, he prospered in music, especially when, in 1963, Guest was succeeded by Christopher Robinson and his assistant Harry Bramma, both “fantastic teachers”.

There being no formal O- or A-level music classes offered by the school, harmony and counterpoint were digested after hours at Bramma’s house along with cake and tea.

Cleobury studied music and was an organ scholar at St John’s College, Cambridge, under George Guest, and after graduating became organist and head of music at St Matthew’s, Northampton, and head of music at Northampton grammar school.

In 1974 he was appointed sub-organist of Westminster Abbey, before becoming the first Anglican master of music at Westminster Cathedral in 1979. In 1982 he took up the King’s post at Cambridge, where he was also conductor of the Cambridge University Musical Society from 1983 to 2009.

Highlights of his tenure of CUMS included the 800th anniversary celebrations of Cambridge University in 2009 with the premiere of The Sorcerer’s Mirror by Peter Maxwell Davies, but also a Mahler Eighth Symphony in the Royal Albert Hall, in 1999, and the Britten War Requiem in Coventry cathedral, in 2000, on the 60th anniversary of its bombing. He became the society’s first conductor laureate in 2016.

He was also honorary president and a regular conductor of the East Anglia Chamber Orchestra, founded in 2010 to provide opportunities for non-professional musicians to play together. In addition to his conducting he maintained a rapport with the organ loft, giving recitals in such venues as Leeds and Birmingham town halls, the Performing Arts Centre in Hong Kong, as well as Houston, Dallas, Salt Lake City and Cape Town. Recordings on the instrument included albums of music by Bach, Howells, Elgar, Liszt, Reubke and Mendelssohn.

He firmly believed that services at King’s, while nominally Anglican, should be able to cater also for visitors who might be Buddhist, agnostic or atheist. To external appearances he seemed reserved and introverted, but in the words of an anonymous 12-year-old chorister, “you have to be in partnership with him to see an entirely different world of emotions revealed”.

Cleobury was a man of extraordinary energy, both conscientious and considerate: at services he would stand in front of the organ screen to meet and greet, afterwards going back into the chapel to hear out his organ scholar’s voluntary. He was appointed CBE in 2009 and knighted this year for services to choral music.

He is survived by his wife, Emma (nee Disley), whom he married in 2004, and their two daughters, and by two daughters from his first marriage, to Penny (nee Holloway), which ended in divorce.

• Stephen John Cleobury, organist and choirmaster, born 31 December 1948; died 22 November 2019

• This article was amended on 25 November 2019. The tribute paid to Stephen Cleobury by choristers and former choral and organ scholars was at one of his last evensongs in June, not at his final evensong in July, as an earlier version said.