Victor-Charles-Paul Dourlen was a French composer and music teacher at the Conservatoire de Paris during the first half of the nineteenth century. He is primarily known as a theorist being his treatises on harmony, based on the methods of Charles Simon Catel, widely used as reference, especially his Tractat d'acompanyament pràctic (1834) and Tractat d'harmonia (1838), as well as his Méthode élémentaire pour le piano-forte (1820). Victor Dourlen entered the Conservatory de Paris in 1799 at the age of 19 as a pupil of Francois-Joseph Gossec and Francois-Adrien Boieldieu. He became a teacher of elementary singing in 1800 and, presented with the Prix de Rome by his teachers in 1805, he won the first prize for musical composition with his cantata Cupidon pleurant Psyché. He subsequently went to Italy and on his return to Paris he produced several operas, among which are Philocles and Limn0e. He was appointed professor of harmony and composition in 1816, a position which he held until 1842. Among his graduated pupils are Ambroise Thomas, son of Boieldieu, Francois Bazin, Henri Herz, Antoine François Marmontel, Félix Le Couppey, Alexandre Goria and Louis Désiré Besozzi.