music

(Television Academy Foundation)

Alf Clausen, the composer of The Simpsons for nearly 27 years, has died following a struggle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 84.

Raised in Jamestown, North Dakota, Clausen’s big break was arranging music for the Donny & Marie variety show in 1976. He would go on to be the composer for the dramedy series Moonlighting and sitcom ALF, and worked on a number of films including Splash, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and The Naked Gun. He joined The Simpsons in fall 1990, having been recommended by writer/producer Jay Kogen, whose musician uncle had worked alongside him numerous times. The first season had been scored by Richard Gibbs, but the producers were trying out new composers for Season 2. Clausen was hesitant about the job, as he recounted in a 2007 interview:

I had no interest in doing animation; I wanted to be a drama composer. And [creator] Matt Groening said his favorite comment to me: “We don’t look upon this as being a cartoon but a drama where the characters are drawn, and we would like it scored that way. Can you do that?” And I went, “Bingo, I can do that. I have technology to do that.”

His debut episode was “Treehouse of Horror,” the first installment of what would become an annual Halloween tradition, which earned him the position of permanent composer. He would go on to score over 600 episodes over 27 seasons. He racked up many Emmy nominations – per Variety, he is “believed to be the most-nominated composer in Emmy history” – with his first win in 1997 for “We Put the Spring in Springfield.”

The late Chris Ledesma, the show’s longtime music editor who’d worked closely with Clausen, sang his praises in a 2011 blog post:

Picking Alf as composer for THE SIMPSONS was the best choice the producers could have ever made. His ability to write in virtually any musical expression or ethnicity has served the show brilliantly. I can’t think of any other TV show in history that has had scores with influences from so many eras in history, locales around (and above and below) the world, and numerous styles from country to pop to acid rock to Broadway and more. More than 470 episodes in, he still continues to amaze and deliver.

In a 2014 interview with the Television Academy Foundation, Clausen talked about the long hours of the job, and confessed it was “very difficult” working with the show’s iconic theme song, which he’d inherited from Danny Elfman. Asked to name his biggest contribution to the show, he replied “I give it a certain special touch that nobody else has.”

Clausen had a particular talent for close-but-legally-distinct musical parodies. Voice actress Nancy Cartwright highlighted this skill in her book My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy:

Part of the challenge Alf faces is how to make the parodies sound like the songs they emulate. This is the genius of Alf. In “Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala-d’oh-cious,” he had the task of creating a sound that felt like and reminded you of the popular Mary Poppins hit, but was just tongue-in-cheek enough so that it didn’t get us sued. He goes to great lengths to figure out the original songs’ harmonies, melodies, rhythms and orchestrations so that he can then “tweak” this and “sweeten” that and otherwise shift it enough so that this new song reminds the listener, but is still unique.

Some of these pieces were included in a tribute to Clausen during 2014’s “Simpsons Take the Bowl” event at the Hollywood Bowl, including Sideshow Bob’s theme, a takeoff on Bernard Herrmann’s Cape Fear score.

Although Clausen had desired to do longform, feature film work, 2007’s The Simpsons Movie was scored by Hans Zimmer, the acclaimed film composer who’d previously scored several of executive producer James L. Brooks’s films. He seemed unhappy about the decision, commenting obliquely “Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.”

In 2017, Clausen was unceremoniously fired from the show via e-mail. After the news broke, Simpsons producers issued a statement, claiming he would “continue to have an ongoing role in the show” and they remained “committed to the finest in music for the Simpsons, absolutely including orchestral.” The 35-piece orchestra was dropped, and Clausen was replaced by Hans Zimmer….’s music production company Bleeding Fingers Music. He would continue to be credited with the title “composer emeritus” for the next two seasons.

Clausen filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the show in 2019, alleging he’d been fired due to age discrimination. Simpsons producers countered that he’d been let go “because they didn’t think the classical- and jazz-inclined Clausen was up to the challenges of more contemporary tunes,” and claimed he’d been secretly delegating his work to his son Scott, a fellow composer. A particular point of contention was the two-parter episode “The Great Phatsby,” a hip-hop themed parody of the Fox series Empire. The lawsuit was eventually dropped.

In addition to The Simpsons, Clausen worked on the animated series The Critic, the Bette Midler sitcom Bette, and the film Half Baked. He also released a jazz album in 2005.

Following news of Clausen’s death, Matt Groening paid tribute:

Alf was the Man of a Thousand Music Cues — actually probably more than 10,000 — during his decades on The Simpsons. He was tireless, inspired, and always up for the musical challenges we threw at him. I called him our secret weapon.