As I watch the Olympics I'm hearing many of the classical greats as background music. I was thinking that Paul McCartney has been writing longer than most of the classical composers lived. His catalog is massive and he's fluent on all sorts of instruments. Is there anyone living or dead that has contributed more to music?

I wouldn't think of McCartney as a 'composer' really. I know he's had a stab at classical music, but it hardly set the world alight. Great songwriter certainly, and hugely influential of course (when Lennon was there), but he passed his peak about 35 years ago.
 
If you hold him up against Mozart (even just the Requiem Mass), he's really a bit of an amateur.

To paraphrase John Lennon, he's not even the best composer in The Beatles.
 
 

An argument can be made that McCartney is the most important person in music history. I don't like to make music a competition. I know it can be fun to say who's best at what, but it's impossible to measure. McCartney has the stats to make a case, but I like Lennon better. Harrison is my favorite Beatle. It's just my opinion of course, but I don't look at classical music as being better or more important than Rock & Roll, Jazz or Blues.

I don't know how many songs Paul wrote but Telemann's (known) body of work consists of 3000 pieces of music.
 
But even without taking numbers into account. Bach always comes to mind. Even just one piece of music probably contain as much music as the entire Beatles discography. Not to mention that George Martin added a lot of music to some of their songs.
 
You take a fragment of even just a Concerto, something that's considered secondary in the context of that piece of music, an embellishment, a few notes from an harmony - and you can build a complete pop song out of that.
 
And, inversely, to Haydn or Mozart, a finished pop song would maybe represent, in the best of case, a basic idea, a starting point or a fragment of a much much larger piece. 
 
If I'd put them on a scale, I'd say a pop song is like a little country on a tiny planet whereas the work of the great composers is usually more like an entire solar system. 
 
 
That being said, I reiterate, I'm a huge fan of the Beatles and popular music.
 
 
 
 

Can I just say................................
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
......anything here?

Rain
 
You take a fragment of even just a Concerto, something that's considered secondary in the context of that piece of music, an embellishment, a few notes from an harmony - and you can build a complete pop song out of that.
 

Yes, and that's been done many times; Greg Lake's 'I Believe in Father Christmas', Manfred Mann's 'Joybringer', Sting's 'Russians', Eric Carmen's 'All By Myself', and about a hundred pop songs based on Pachalbel's Canon in D Major.

Seriously, 
 
My mayte Jaymes hit the nail on the head. Composer is probably not the proper term for Macca. Songwriter yes. Prolific yes. The best? Most hooks yes. The best? I duuno. That opinion will change from day to day.
 
Clint also has the right of it for me. Lennon had more guts in his songs. George was more passionate in his songwriting. Paul is kinda shmaltzy to me and I even saw him live and thought the same. He talks to the audience like he's lost in 1940's.

jamesg1213

Rain
 
You take a fragment of even just a Concerto, something that's considered secondary in the context of that piece of music, an embellishment, a few notes from an harmony - and you can build a complete pop song out of that.
 

Yes, and that's been done many times; Greg Lake's 'I Believe in Father Christmas', Manfred Mann's 'Joybringer', Sting's 'Russians', Eric Carmen's 'All By Myself', and about a hundred pop songs based on Pachalbel's Canon in D Major.

So I can safely steal from all of them too?

clintmartin
I don't look at classical music as being better or more important than Rock & Roll, Jazz or Blues.

Nor me. Songs loosely in the rock idiom are what 'speak' to me, and chime with my life. However, I could take my absolute favourite song or piece of music written by anyone since I started listening to music 50 years ago and it wouldn't even come close in terms of compositional quality to 'Lark Ascending' by Vaughan Williams.