The Oxford Harmonic Society was formed in the year 1921 as the Iffley Glee Club, an offshoot of the Iffley Institute which was founded in 1917 as part of the Village Institute movement. By 1924 it had gained a distinguished conductor in Reginald Jacques and, in order to accommodate its increasing membership, had moved into Oxford city, where the club started to give concerts in the Town Hall, and renamed itself the Oxford Harmonic Society.
This moderately large choir was conducted by a succession of Oxford New College organists: John Dykes Bower, Sydney Watson, Herbert Kennedy Andrews, and, after a gap of twenty years, David Lumsden.
In the late nineteen sixties, the society grew to the present one hundred and fifty or so members and began to make frequent use of professional orchestras. The many distinguished soloists who have sung with the choir include Lynne Dawson, Ann Mackay, Linda Hibberd, James Bowman, Gerald English, Ian Partridge, Michael George, Stephen Varcoe, Henry Herford and many others.
