Prom 68: The Cardinall's Musick / Carwood, Royal Albert Hall, London

The music of 16th-century Spain often seems more sheerly beautiful than any other music from any time or place. And of the many composers whose work graced the cathedrals of the Iberian peninsula and its expanding colonies, none wrote music lovelier than that of Tomas Luis de Victoria. The season's last late-night Prom brought his Missa pro Victoria, presented in a setting of Marian motets and antiphons by his (near-) contemporaries. There was no Spanish military victory at the time of its composition, in the late 1590s, though scholars have tried to pin it to one; the unrestrained richness of the score combined with a punning title suggest, to my mind, that he wrote it for his own pleasure.

The Missa pro Victoria divides its nine voices into two groups, of five and four, often bouncing phrases across the space between them with a magisterial rapidity. Victoria's syllabic settings of the Gloria and Credo send the texts hurtling forward, giving them enormous dramatic force.

The variety of Spanish music in and around Victoria's day is surprising, and his Prom colleagues were well chosen: they underlined his supremacy while revealing their own individuality. Juan de Anchieta's restraint, Juan Escribano's slow-moving melodic lines, Francisco de Peñalosa's dark textures – all threw Victoria into sharper relief. Discreet support came from an ensemble of cornets, sackbuts, shawms, harp and organ; and the instrumental presentation of a Francisco Guerrero motet, with the different colours making the lines easier to follow, emphasised the subtlety of his polyphony. An antiphon from Juan Gutierrez de Padilla, Malaga-born but maestro de capilla in Pueblo, Mexico, until his death in 1664, suggested that systematic examination of his neglected output would bring substantial rewards.

The Cardinall's Musick was founded in 1989 and, under its conductor, Andrew Carwood, has become one of the most important vocal groups in Britain's early-music armoury. Carwood's assured direction helped to give its Prom appearance the same qualities – not least textural clarity and absolute security of pitch – that have brought the CDs a garland of awards. You soon forgot the musicians and concentrated on the beauty of the music. Carwood's programme note described the circumstances in which these works would have been heard, in a large building, through a haze of incense, over the heads of clerics and worshippers. The Albert Hall is itself a latter-day cathedral, and we left it with our souls rinsed.