Richard Goldner

Richard Goldner (23 June 1908 – 27 September 1991) was a Romanian-born, Viennese-trained Australian violist, pedagogue and inventor. He founded Musica Viva Australia in 1945, which became the world's largest entrepreneurial chamber music organisation. The Goldner String Quartet was named in his memory.

Richard Goldner was born in a small town in Romania in 1908. His family moved to Vienna when he was six months old. He took up the violin at the age of four or five. After leaving school, he studied architecture at university, but also secretly enrolled at the New Vienna Conservatory, where he studied under Simon Pullman. He later received another diploma from the Academy of Music. He received instruction at master classes from Bronisław Huberman and other violinists. He played the viola in the Simon Pullman Ensemble from 1931 to 1938, and became Pullman's assistant and closest friend. (Pullman was later to die in a Nazi extermination camp.) Goldner and his brother escaped the Nazi oppression of Jews in Austria and arrived in Australia in 1939, shortly after the start of World War II. There, although designated an enemy alien he soon became involved in musical life in his new country. He founded the Monomeeth String Quartet, basing its name on an indigenous word for peace and harmony. However, because the Australian Musicians Union's restrictions on employing foreigners meant he could not take up an offer of a position with an Australian Broadcasting Commission orchestra, he had to find other ways of making a living. He worked as a jeweller with his brother and also invented a new style of zipper that was immune to sand and would not break under war-time conditions, and which was vitally needed for use in the manufacture of parachutes. For this, he was attached to the Army Inventions Directorate and the Royal Australian Air Force. This invention made him a lot of money, and was acknowledged in the official history of Australia's war effort. In 2011, the Oscar-winning former film maker Suzanne Baker published Beethoven and the Zipper: The Astonishing Story of Musica Viva.

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