The Oxford & Cambridge Musical Club was established in 1899, but its form and purpose derived from the long history of informal music-making that had been a part of student and scholarly life at the two universities for several hundred years. This chapter presents an overview of the development of musical societies in the universities from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries and shows how graduates at the beginning of the 1900s established a parallel tradition that enabled them to continue and extend their undergraduate musical practices.

While the origins of student music-making are obscure, it is possible that it began through convivial singing (and occasional instrumental playing) during gatherings of scholars at mealtimes or in ale-houses, and this social tradition was probably commonplace from the early years of each university's existence. The first documented account of informal college music clubs in Oxford is dated to the 1650s, and no record of a music society in Cambridge has been discovered that predates the testimony of Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, who visited the city in July 1710:

Uffenbach's somewhat disdainful observations notwithstanding, the Christ's College Music Club was evidently a well-established and popular institution, and it may be supposed that it continued to provide the ‘bach-elors, masters and doctors of music’ with music-making opportunities in a congenial environment for many years. Later in the eighteenth century – also in Cambridge – the Black Bear Inn at Market Street hosted a musical club that promoted concerts in its first-floor assembly room.