King's College in Cambridge was founded in 1441 by King Henry VI, whose plans included a magnificent cathedral-like church staffed by priests and choristers. In the event, King's College Chapel was not completed until 1547 and the modern tradition of its choir singing on a regular basis was not established until the 1870s. However, that tradition came to embrace the annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols (first introduced in 1918), a distinctive choral sound shaped to the Chapel's notorious acoustic, and a sequence of long-serving and highly distinguished choirmasters. The Choir is also renowned for its recordings, mostly for EMI, of a wide-ranging repertoire of liturgical and other sacred works, including these famous early 1970s recordings of major choral works by Benjamin Britten.