While firmly based on Gregorian chant, the choir sings a wide repertoire range from Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Thomas Tallis and William Byrd to George Frideric Handel, Herbert Howells, Samuel Sebastian Wesley, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Duruflé, Ildebrando Pizzetti, James MacMillan and many other composers including occasional commissioned contemporary works.
The genre declined after World War II, perhaps with the advent of television, although composers such as Dallapiccola, Pizzetti, Rota, Henze, Zimmermann, Maderna and Rasmussen continued to compose for the radio, as do 21st-century composers such as the Estonian Jüri Reinvere, Amy Kohn in America and Robert Saxton in Britain.