Two-time Emmy winner and 20-plus-time nominee Alf Clausen, who created pop culture earworms across 27 seasons of FOX’s The Simpsons, died Thursday at his home in Los Angeles’ Valley Village neighborhood at age 84. The news was shared by his daughter, Kaarin Clausen, who told The Hollywood Reporter that her father had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease about eight years ago.
Born Alf Heiberg Clausen in Minneapolis on March 28, 1941, the late composer spent time as a child living in Ames, Iowa and Jamestown, North Dakota, and began piano lessons at an early age. In his school days, he took up French horn in seventh grade. He originally pursued a mechanical engineering degree at North Dakota State University, but changed his major to music after spending a summer with a musician cousin in New York and taking in Broadway shows and concerts from My Fair Lady to Miles Davis. While working on his Masters at the University of Wisconsin, Clausen enrolled in a correspondence course in arranging and composition from Berklee College of Music in Boston, and relocated to study there full time (and, eventually, teach).
In 1967, Clausen moved to Los Angeles, where he played live to supplement his income as a music copyist on notable projects like Plane of the Apes, M*A*S*H and The Partridge Family. He got his first arranger gig in 1976 on Donny & Marie, where he was promoted to musical director in its third season, and went on to become a musical director on The Mary Tyler Moore Hour in 1979. Throughout the 1980s, he orchestrated and composed for Airplane II, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Splash, Moonlighting, ALF and other films and shows.
Clausen originally wasn’t interested in The Simpsons job, recalling for the Television Academy Foundation’s The Interviews:
“I was posed the question, ‘Would you like to score an animated show?’ and I said, ‘No’ … 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.’
[Groening told me,] ‘We look on our show as being, not a cartoon, we look upon it as a drama where the characters are drawn, and we would like it scored that way. Could you do that?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I could do that.’
He said he didn’t want it scored like a typical Warner Bros. cartoon. He didn’t want it scored like a typical Disney cartoon. He wanted something different.”
The composer’s first Springfieldian trail was the 1990 “Treehouse of Horror” special, offering 42 musical cues. He went on to enrich The Simpsons soundscape for more than 550 episodes, from the second to the 28th season (2017), scoring with a full live orchestra. His notable tunes included “See My Vest,” “Always My Dad,” “Vote for a Winner,” “Ode to Branson,” “Union Strike Folk Song” and “The Garbage Man” — a parody of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory‘s “The Candy Man,” recorded by U2.
Clausen was repeatedly nominated by the Emmy Wards for his work on the record-setting animated series, winning two original song prizes (with lyricist Ken Keeler) for “We Put the Spring in Springfield” (1997) and “You’re Checkin’ In (A Musical Tribute to the Betty Ford Center)” (1998). He was also the winner of five Annie Awards.
Controversially, Clausen was given the boot from The Simpsons in 2017 when the producers opted to replace the show’s lush live orchestra budget with synthesized music, which cut costs by 40%. Clausen sued Disney and Fox for his dismissal, originally on grounds of age discrimination and later claiming he was fired due to his Parkinson’s diagnosis. Show executives countered that Clausen’s work on hip-hop themed episode “The Great Phatsby” exposed his unfamiliarity with contemporary music genres and said he had been sharing out his duties with his son, Scott. A settlement was reached in 2022.
Clausen is survived by his wife of over 30 years, Sally; daughter Kaarin; sons Scott and Kyle; and stepchildren Joshua and Emily.
[Source: The Hollywood Reporter]
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