The list did not make an attempt to judge the 100 greatest pieces, and was not always even my 100 faves. On other radio formats, these answers are loud and clear.
Music is mostly by living people from here and everything is very short.
Therefore, the list divided music into 4 groups, which, for simplicity sake we'll label Live Americans , Dead Americans , Live Foreigners and Dead Foreigners . Each had 25 suggestions. For people unattuned to classical music, suggesting that only a quarter of the music should be of the here and now and that a full quarter should be by faraway dead folks seems far-fetched. Imagine a quarter of your friends being dead and in other countries. Everyone included on the Century List, both living and dead, is someone you or someone who know could have met.