Delerue and Legrand are the obvious candidates here, but I'm also interested in other scores and composers from the Nouvelle Vague that have not received the attention they deserve.
Delerue and Legrand are the obvious candidates here, but I'm also interested in other scores and composers from the Nouvelle Vague that have not received the attention they deserve.
My trinity of favorite French composers are Jean Prodromides, Pierre Jansen + Antoine Duhamel.
Not too sure if director Claude Chabrol is/was considered as 'new wave' as his (more well-known) contemporaries, but Chabrol was right there at the start of Nouvelle Vague during the late 1950s. Commencing with 1960's Les Bonnes Femmes and lasting around 22 years was Chabrol's music collaboration with Pierre Jansen. Antoine Duhamel was involved with at least 3 films by Francois Truffaut between 1968 & 1970 after Truffaut ceased using Bernard Herrmann and Georges Delerue had not yet returned to work with him. Jean Prodromides was never truly involved with the New Wave, but he did (like Michel Magne) collaborate with director Roger Vadim (who has never been considered Nouvelle Vague).
Most of my favorite New Wave directors' (such as Alain Resnais and Jacques Rivette) films fluctuated widely with musical styles and assorted composers. I wish to make special mention of Rivette's Paris Belongs to Us (with music by Philippe Arthuys & Ivo Malec), Rivette's The Nun (music by Jean-Claude Eloy), Resnais' Muriel (by Hans Werner Henze) and especially Alain Cavalier's Le combat dans l'île (with music by Serge Nigg).
Composer Maurice Leroux also deserves greater acknowledgement.
