Pay for play: Why stop at the fiddle section?

SIXTEEN violinists in the Beethoven Orchestra of Bonn, Germany, recently sued that organization demanding a pay raise. Their gripe? They play more notes day in and day out than violists, clarinetists, trumpeters or, God help the slackers, timpanists.

The argument is that their parts are more complicated and keep them sawing away while many of their fellow orchestra members are, in effect, twiddling their thumbs counting rests.

Shameful.

When you think about it that way, it starts to seem little shy of criminal at how underappreciated, and undercompensated, the heroic fiddler truly is.

The legal system will decide their noble quest when the case goes before a judge next month. Should the fiddlers win, they’ll revolutionize music, if not the rest of society.

For starters, the worlds of rock and jazz would be turned upside down. Surely other downtrodden musicians will hop aboard the bandwagon once note production becomes the new standard of fortune and fame.

Saxophonist Kenny G would find himself standing in the welfare line and latter-day Charlie Parkers would move into Beverly Hills en masse, alongside the drummers for every punk band on the planet. Every mile-a-minute heavy-metal guitarist would be an instant kazillionaire, while B.B. King, who would rather find one right note than spew out a thousand meaningless ones, would file Chapter 11.

The potential flaw in the Bonn violinists’ case is that inevitably some wiseguy double bassist will point out that playing 400 bars of whole notes in Wagner ain’t as easy as it looks. And just because beleaguered cymbal players have little to do while counting 700 measures between entrances doesn’t mean they don’t warrant hazard pay for risking injury from the toothpicks they use to prop open their eyelids.

Of course, the possibilities get even more intriguing if you consider the by-the-note philosophy spreading to other corners of the art world.

Painters would no longer derive value in their work from compositional balance, choice of subject matter, skilled use of color, evocation of mood or expression of ideas.

We could just count brushstrokes, tally dollops of paint.

Pointillism would see a huge revival, the price of Jackson Pollock’s works would skyrocket, while the bottom would drop out of the Picasso market.

Sculptors could price their works by the pound.

Under-earning writers, often paid by the article, sometimes by the word, could lobby for pay by the letter. (The downside here would be city council stories and pro sports reports overloaded with the word “indefatigably.”)

Why stop at the arts?

Pretty soon, everybody would be after a micropiece of this action. If the L.A. Phil’s violin sections are getting a check for every 64th note of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” why shouldn’t the sheet metal workers who put Disney Hall together be entitled to sue for back pay calculated per rivet?

Carpenters could make a case for pay by the nail; butchers, surgeons and pizza tossers would form a new union to champion their pay-per-slice campaign. All worthy positions in today’s complicated labor market to be sure.

But it does bring up the prospect of how to pay for all these well-deserved raises.

Here’s my plan.

We institute piecework pay across the board, then watch the cash start to pile up with the money TV stations save when local news anchors nationwide start getting paid by the fresh insight rather than the glib retort. During sweeps months alone the reserve could reach billions.

No, wait. That won’t work either. Who’d be left to report on the Bonn violinists’ verdict?

Randy Lewis can be reached at randy.lewis@latimes.com.