It's not a requirement to have the pieces memorized. We opted to go for the safety of using music, plus we didn't have the rehearsal schedule to commit time to memorizing it. To my knowledge they don't give lower scores for using music. Out of the four times I've been in groups that have competed in the competition, we used music twice. In those two instances we placed 3rd (2013) and 2nd, whereas when we memorized the pieces we didn't advance past semi-finals. While it's certainly more beneficial to know the music well enough to play it from memory, no judge has ever written comments on the scoring sheet about using music.
why didn't they play from memory like the others?? did they get worse "evaluation" because of it?
It's not a requirement to have the pieces memorized. We opted to go for the safety of using music, plus we didn't have the rehearsal schedule to commit time to memorizing it. To my knowledge they don't give lower scores for using music. Out of the four times I've been in groups that have competed in the competition, we used music twice. In those two instances we placed 3rd (2013) and 2nd, whereas when we memorized the pieces we didn't advance past semi-finals. While it's certainly more beneficial to know the music well enough to play it from memory, no judge has ever written comments on the scoring sheet about using music.