Antoine Goléa (real name Siegfried Goldman) (30 August 1906 in Vienna – 12 October 1980 in Paris) was a French musicologist of Romanian origin.
After three years at the French high school in Bucharest, his parents decided to send him to France to complete his secondary education.
He arrived in Montpellier towards the end of the summer of 1928 and, having obtained his bachelor's degree in philosophy and a certificate of higher studies in German, he moved to Paris in October 1929, where he settled for the rest of his life.
Goléa was one of the first participants of the famous radio talk La Tribune des critiques de disques [fr] by Armand Panigel, launched in 1947 on RTF (and later on France Musique), alongside Claude Rostand, José Bruyr, and Henri Jacques.
Excerpt from an article published in the journal Musica in 1956, and included in his biography Je suis un violoniste raté:[4] The works of the past which are rightly admired today, the most often played works of the past, are those that, at the time of their birth: 1) brought something new into musical evolution; 2) offended the sensibility of contemporaries; 3) are today marked by an intrinsic value, independent of their place in evolution... Let it be understood, therefore, once and for all: 1) that a work can only please if it is the fruit of genius or, at least, of a very great talent; 2) that nevertheless its permanence is assured only if it also brings something new into musical evolution or, at least, takes into account the last stage of this evolution, which is not yet sclerosed.