Alf Clausen, Acclaimed Simpsons Composer, Dies at 84

Alf Clausen, who spent nearly three decades as composer for The Simpsons—scoring seasons 2 through 28—died Thursday (May 29) at his Los Angeles home. Clausen’s daughter, Kaarin Clausen, told The Hollywood Reporter that her father had been diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy eight years ago. He was 84.

Clausen was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and was raised in Jamestown, North Dakota. While studying at North Dakota State University, Clausen took a correspondence course in big-band songwriting courtesy of Boston’s Berklee College of Music. He eventually transferred to the school, becoming its first French horn player.

Clausen began his songwriting career in Los Angeles, where he freelanced as a composer, ghostwriter, and arranger. He eventually found work on television shows like the Donny & Marie show and The Mary Tyler Moore Hour. In the 1980s, Clausen served as the composer for the detective series Moonlighting, for which he received six Emmy nominations. He later composed music, appropriately, for the television show ALF. Clausen also composed the music for films such as Weird Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and The Naked Gun.

Clausen joined The Simpsons in 1990, when the show was in its second season. As composer, his role involved creating songs, cues, and reinterpreting Danny Elfman’s theme alongside a 35-piece live orchestra. Clausen scored over 560 episodes of the show and was nominated for 21 Emmy Awards (out of a career total of 30) for his work. He won twice, for 1997’s “We Put the Spring in Springfield” and 1998’s “You’re Checkin’ In (A Musical Tribute To The Betty Ford Center).” Clausen’s trademarks on the show often involved big band, jazz, or broadway numbers and while his compositions could be silly, they were often extremely moving. His songs for the show were collected on soundtrack albums like 1997’s Songs in the Key of Springfield and 1999’s Go Simpsonic With The Simpsons.

Speaking to the Television Academy in 2015 as part of their The Interviews series, Clausen described his initial reticence at taking the job that would come to define his career: “I said, ‘I just got off of four years of Moonlighting, and I really want to be a drama composer. I’m more interested in doing longform feature films.’” It was Simpsons creator Matt Groening who eventually got the composer on board by telling him “we look on our show as being not a cartoon—we look upon it as a drama where the characters are drawn.” In a 1996 profile published in Berklee Today, Groening called Clausen “one of the unacknowledged treasures of the show.”