As the organist and choirmaster of St John’s College, Cambridge, George Guest brought both Welsh fervour and English harmony to the timeless tradition of collegiate choral singing. He combined gravitas with friendly informality, and in a 40-year tenure he enhanced the reputation of the choir, leading to regular broadcasts of evensong and carol services. The Advent carol service is an annual high point for both Radio 3 audiences and Cambridge congregations — with two public performances in an overflowing chapel.

The choir of St John’s had long been a serious rival to that of King’s. In the early years of the last century, when the organists of the two colleges were men of different tastes, age, and temperament, relationships were not always happy, but eventually goodwill and good sense prevailed. As Guest said: “There is room in the world for both.”

The chapels of the two colleges have very different acoustics and demand different types of singing. At St John’s during the first half of the century Cyril Rootham had achieved a high standard, and between 1938 and 1951 Robin Orr established the foundations upon which a revitalised choral tradition could be built. In 1947 he appointed Guest as his first undergraduate organ student. Most unusually, Guest was appointed immediately on graduation to succeed his teacher. Modest, but determined and ambitious, he was concerned above all with balance of tone and beauty of choral colour. He admired greatly the work of Boris Ord at King’s, and he aimed at achieving a similar perfection of sound, without in any way apeing the style of the other choir.

When Guest arrived at St John’s, however, there was little doubt that King’s had the upper hand. In his early days evensong was sometimes performed to an empty chapel, and Guest suspected the college had hired him simply “to see the whole thing through to a decent death”. In 1954, when the fellows almost closed the choir school, one don, a scientist from Grimsby, declared at a college meeting that “as a plain botanist, I’d like to have some proof that St John’s has any kind of a musical tradition and that it is necessary to have a choir school. Can I have something in writing?”

A few days later a telegram arrived at the Master’s Lodge from an “R. Vaughan Williams” in Italy. It read: “Save St John’s Choir School at all costs.” Was this the R. Vaughan Williams, the Master asked Guest? Who else, he replied — not mentioning that he had solicited the telegram. Guest then persuaded the other fellows to make available a property in which to create a full boarding choir school to rival that of King’s. Its tiny old premises became a cake shop.

Guest set out to build a world-class choir. First, he said, he had to recruit the right boys. “It’s no good appointing a fat boy,” he said. “They are the ones who get tired very easily, particularly in long recording sessions, or say that they feel faint.” Even slimmer boys needed “a good ear” and a “gleam in the eye”, indicating quickness and intelligence.

A staunch Anglican, Guest was deeply influenced by the singing of plainsong at Solesmes, and always showed great sympathy for French choral music, especially that of Poulenc, but the repertory of the choir was wide and varied.

In 1955 he oversaw a rebuilding of the chapel organ, adding a fourth manual. The installation of a solo trumpet stop was celebrated by the composition of Tippett’s remarkable and highly unconventional setting of the Evening Canticles.Guest himself was much in demand as a recital organist, and remarkably, no fewer than eight of his students went on to be cathedral chief organists.

Though sensitive and highly strung, he had a strong vein of common sense. Pomposity and pretentiousness irritated him, and he had a pleasantly dry sense of humour. He was also an admirable raconteur with a gift for mimicry, especially of certain dialects.

He remained a lively and enthusiastic choir trainer almost to the end of his life. Conducting a choir camp in Ohio in 1998 he wore a T-shirt bearing the legend “Old enough to know the score”. “To be a chorister,” he told his students, “you’ve got to be tough physically and tough mentally, not to fall asleep and get bored. You’ve got to aim at perfection, even though you’ll never achieve it in this imperfect world.”

George Howell Guest was the son of a grocery-man and travelling village organist. He was born in Bangor, North Wales, and was a chorister at the cathedral there, and then at Chester, where he went on to become sub-organist. He moved to Cambridge after four years in the RAF, and soon made his mark. He won the John Stewart of Rannoch Scholarship for Sacred Music in 1948, and was a natural choice for organist of St John’s in 1951. He was a university lecturer in music from 1956, but although conscientious, he found this more academic work less congenial, and took early retirement from this in 1982. He served as University Organist from 1974 to 1991.

He remained devoted to his native Wales. Although from an English-speaking family, he learnt Welsh as a child, though he lost it when he left the Principality. In retirement he studied the language once more, taking an O level and an A level. He conducted choirs in innumerable Welsh towns and villages, and frequently adjudicated at eisteddfodau.

In 1977 he was made a white Druid for his services to Welsh music. He was also deeply interested in the literature of Wales, and at Cambridge attended the Welsh Religious Service at Wesley House. Recently he coached a Welsh class for the University of the Third Age in Cambridge.

He was frequently shocked by English ignorance of Wales. Appearing on Desert Island Discs, he chose the collected works of Saunders Lewis as his book. “Nobody had heard of him. Can you imagine?” he complained. “It’s as if you spoke to a Welshman about Shakespeare and he said he’d never heard of him.”

His other great passion was football, and in particular Chester City. From the day that Chester joined the Football League in 1931 Guest kept a handwritten record of every match, whether he had seen it or not. He was at Old Trafford for the famous 1965 FA Cup third round tie between Manchester United and Chester. “My joy when they were leading 1-0 at half-time was ‘unconfined’, as they say — but they lost 2-1.” His pleasure was even greater when, in the 1974-75 season, Chester beat his son’s team, the League champions Leeds United, 3-0 in the fourth round of the League Cup.

Choristers attending their 5.30pm choir practice knew better than to arrive without having first checked the football results. As one recalled: “If Chester had not done so well, then the choir jolly well knew about it.”

A member of the Council of the Royal College of Organists from 1964 until his death, he was its President from 1978 to 1980. He was also a member of the Council of the Royal Schools of Church Music from 1983, and was an examiner to the Associated Board of Royal Schools of Music from 1959 to 1992. He was president of the Cathedral Organists’ Association from 1980 to 1982, and of the Incorporated Association of Organists from 1987 to 1989. He was president of the Friends of Cathedral Music and an honorary fellow of several universities and colleges.

He and the St John’s choir made some sixty recordings for various labels. Many of them were for Decca’s much loved and sadly missed Argo imprint and have achieved classic status, notably the warm yet idiomatic performances of Palestrina and Victoria, lively contributions to the pioneering cycle of Haydn Masses, and magical accounts of the Fauré and Duruflé Requiems, as well as a classy account of Stainer’s perennially popular Crucifixion.

Guest’s autobiography, A Guest at Cambridge, was first published in 1994, and is now in its second edition. A third edition is planned. He also wrote a small corpus of church music, including a beautiful Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis for the Lady Margaret Singers, the professional choir he formed in the 1950s and with which he frequently worked both in Britain and overseas. He was appointed CBE in 1987.

George Guest is survived by his wife Nancy (née Talbot), whom he married in 1959, and by their son and a daughter.

George Guest, CBE, organist and choirmaster of St John’s College, Cambridge, 1951-91, was born in Bangor, Gwynedd, on February 9, 1924. He died in Cambridge on November 20, 2002, aged 78.