As far as can be gathered from early graces, no composition or exercise was demanded from candidates for musical degrees until early in the sixteenth century, at which period the Universities began to grant the degrees only on condition of the performance by the candidate of a specified piece of music in the University Church at “Act time.” Apparently this condition was at first imposed, not as a test of the candidate's fitness for a degree, but in order that music might form a dignified and solemn adjunct to the exercises and ceremonies of the Comitia, or Act, and other important public occasions. All the Cambridge graces concerning degrees in music from about 1516 require the candidate to compose a mass, song, or canticum, &c, to be performed before the University in St. Mary's Church, on the day of the Comitia; and from Wood's accounts the same conditions prevailed at Oxford.

It was enacted at Cambridge in 1608 that the Comitia or great commencement should be closed with a music Act, “with a hymn by the inceptor in this faculty.” And the Oxford statutes of 1636 contain the following enactment: “Concerning the Music Act. After the exercise of the artists (i.e., those who are taking degrees in Arts) in the Act is finished, if there is any who is to take a degree in music he shall perform one or more cantilenas of six or eight parts, with harmony of voices and instruments. This being finished, he shall receive from the Savilian professors the solemnities of his creation.”