Stephen Cleobury, who for 37 years was music director at King’s College, Cambridge — which among other things meant he led one of the most beloved holiday musical events on the planet, the Christmas Eve performance by the college’s celebrated choir — died on Nov. 22 in York, England. He was 70 .

Robin Tyson , his manager and a former choir member, said the cause was cancer.

Mr. Cleobury, who had stepped down from his post just this past September, was a well-regarded organist when he was named to the King’s College position in 1982. In addition to leading the Choir of King’s College, he oversaw assorted other choral groups and from 1995 to 2007 was chief conductor of the BBC Singers, the noted chamber choir.

But he was most often in the news in connection with the Christmas Eve performance, part of A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, a service in the King’s College Chapel broadcast on hundreds of radio stations around the world.

Mr. Cleobury recorded numerous albums with the choir and toured with it regularly, maintaining and enhancing its standing as one of the great guardians of a choral tradition stretching back centuries. “The consistency and excellence of King’s Choir over the years is testimony to the benefits of standards and tradition,” Jeremy Eichler wrote in The New York Times in 2004, reviewing a performance at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in Manhattan.