Polydoor Jozef ‘Paul’ Douliez (Hasselt 1905 – Stuttgart 1989) is a Flemish pianist, conductor, musicologist and composer.
Douliez came from a musical family, and was the father of Ivonne Douliez, better known as actress and director Ivonne Lex. Together with his brothers, he received his first musical education from his mother. Further musical studies at the urban music school in Hasselt, the Royal Flemish Conservatory of Antwerp, private lessons with Paul Gilson. He obtained a diploma of teacher of musical education through the central examination board. In 1933 he obtained a master’s degree in art history from the University of Salzburg.
From 1931 to 1944 he was a pianist and conductor at the NIR, the National Institute for Radio Broadcasting, the Belgian broadcasting organization (after the British BBC model), which broadcast from the Flageyg building in Brussels. It is the predecessor of the BRT and the VRT. In 1944 he became director of the Dutch-language radio station Zender Brussel, used for the dissemination of National Socialist ideas in Belgium. After the liberation of Belgium in WW2, Douliez followed the retreating German army to the Heimat, and remained active as a conductor and composer in Germany and the Netherlands until his death.
Douliez wrote musicological studies under the pseudonym Paul Kuringer: several biographies of composers such as Johan Strauss, Peter Benoit, and Claude Debussy, and theoretical works on music (Seven keys of music, The conquest of Peru and Bal-en dans Conversations). He received several awards, both for his compositions and for his publications.
His Pastorale is a small and unpretentious composition. The first part is subdued and melancholic. The second part opens up the gray clouds to a wider landscape, before returning to the modesty of the beginning.
sources of texts and photos : https://wordpress.com/page/artdecomusic.be/1547