The Princeton University Summer Concerts series has thrived on presenting instrumental chamber ensembles and, to close this summer’s season, added to its offerings by bringing a refined and polished vocal ensemble to Princeton. The German vocal quintet Calmus performed a program based on the works of William Shakespeare last Wednesday night at Richardson Auditorium to one of the best houses the series has seen this summer. All the World’s a Stage, featuring works set by various composers of Shakespearean texts, showed that there is certainly a market for high-quality chamber choral music in Princeton.

Calmus is comprised of five highly-trained vocalists — soprano, counter-tenor, tenor, baritone, and bass. With the musical background of the four men rooted in the German boychoir tradition, it was no wonder that soprano Anja Pöche fit right into the ensemble. Ms. Pöche’s voice was like icing over the lower voices, with little vibrato but carrying like a laser through the hall. The four men — counter-tenor Sebastian Krause, tenor Tobias Pöchek, baritone Ludwig Böhme, and bass Manual Helmeke — supported Ms. Pöche well with impeccable tuning and a precisely blended sound.

Calmus appropriately began their survey of Shakespeare in the late 16th century with a setting of What is Life (after As You Like It) by Orlando Gibbons. Gibbons bridged choral history between the Renaissance and Baroque periods, with music that ebbed and flowed in dynamics and texture. Calmus began the motet with a delicate sound, with the melodic lines of the music uniform among the singers. Placed in the center of the quintet, bass Mr. Helmeke provided a solid vocal foundation to the sound, anchoring the perfect tuning which became even more impressive as the singers maintained their concentration and intensity over each half of the concert.

The composers performed music that ranged from 16th to 21st centuries, and from Europe and the United States. Calmus seemed to have a particular affinity for Finnish composers, with several works by contemporary composers Jaakko Mäntyjärvi and Jussi Chydenius. In the two motets by Mäntyjärvi, the ensemble demonstrated clear diction and uniform vowels in harmonies that created chromatic dissonant chords. In Mäntyjärvi’s Come Away Death, counter-tenor Mr. Krause showed he could sing as high and as cleanly as Ms. Pöche. Chydenius set some of the more humorous texts of the evening, with an arrangement of You Spotted Snakes (from A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and a rollicking setting of Fear No More, from Cymbeline. You Spotted Snakes was composed for tenor, baritone, and bass, with Mr. Helmeke joined by tenor Mr. Pöchek and baritone Mr. Böhme, and the three singers provided a clean male chorus blend.

Throughout the performance, Calmus maintained consistently clean shifts between major and minor tonalities, with piercing harmonies, such as in the setting by Finnish composer Juhani Komulainen of the sonnet So Are You. This motet, bordering on bitonality, displayed the ensemble’s adeptness at complex harmonies and pulsating vocal chords. Calmus turned its attention to American composers with arrangements by Nancy Wertsch, Matthew Harris, and Robert Applebaum. Wertsch’s appealing arrangement of O Mistress Mine featured Mr. Pöchek, well accompanied by the rest of the ensemble. Harris’s setting of Full Fathom Five was one of four on this text presented, each by a different composer. Harris’s arrangement was chantlike, with the closing “ding dong” bells like brilliant chimes from the singers.

Two of the Calmus singers proved also to be excellent arrangers on their own. Mr. Böhme and Mr. Krause provided arrangements of early music songs on Shakespearean texts. Mr. Krause set the second of the four Full Fathom Five arrangements performed by the quintet, with a setting of the text originally composed by 17th-century British composer John Banister. In his five-part work, Mr. Krause retained a Purcell-like soprano melodic line while putting a 21st-century harmonic spin on a madrigal texture. Mr. Böhme’s arrangements of texts from Othello moved the ensemble through major and minor passages while sustaining 16th and 17th-century textures.

Excellent European vocal ensembles do not come to Princeton often enough, and last week’s performance by Calmus proved that local audiences cannot get enough of this genre of music.