Score geeks: Assemble!
Noted historian of the BHS Contest & Judging program Kevin Keller is on a mission: assemble and share the "missing years" of International Contest score sheets. Can you help?
Prior to 1960, the only result that was announced at the International contest was the placement of the medalist quartets as well as who advanced from one round to the next. No scores. Everyone else was “tied” for whatever round they competed! In 1960, we got to know the scores of the Top 10 and starting in 1961, all scores for all quartets were provided. Still, the display in the Official Scoring Summaries (OSS) provided didn’t allow you to see quartets changing places from round to round as they do in the past 4+ decades.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the secretaries would use what they called “totalizing sheets” to record each judge’s score. They would then tally these and figure out who advanced to the next round. They would send all of these sheets to Harmony Hall (HH) to be archived. Copies were made of these (judges and likely others) from HH over time. At some point, these HH archives have likely been lost to the ages. Through the assistance of the late Mike Sisk and others, I have been able to track down a number of them. I thought it would be fun to put them into an OSS format, with judges and scores for each song. I’ve included everything I have (raw scores and OSS’s) in the directories in case you want to get deep into the weeds!
There are obvious gaps where the OSS’s don’t exist, both with years and within a year only some totalizing sheets were found. The earliest goes back to 1949 (I found that one among Buzz Haeger’s papers). If you are a scoresheet junkie, dive in and explore!
If you are in possession of any totalizing sheet dating to 1976 or previous that doesn’t have scores listed here, I would love to get a scan of it. We’ve got most raw scores starting in 1977 and beyond. I will update this file directory accordingly! Even if you have summarized scores for years prior to 1975 that I don’t have here let me know and I’ll take a scan! You can reach me at kkbari@charter.net or kaksings@gmail.com. For those familiar with the ICQ file, they had access to many of these records so I’ve used that file extensively for filling in gaps, but there are still large holes to fill!
Kevin Keller is a BHS Hall of Fame member, arranger, historian, and holder of countless other titles of note and service to the Society.