Alf Clausen, the Emmy-winning composer whose music provided essential accompaniment for the animated antics of “The Simpsons” for 27 years, has died.
His daughter Kaarin Clausen told The Associated Press that Alf Clausen died Thursday at his home in Los Angeles after struggling with Parkinson’s Disease for about a decade. He was 84.
Clausen, who also scored TV series including “Moonlighting” and “Alf” was nominated for 30 Emmy Awards, 21 of them for “The Simpsons,” winning twice.
Al Jean, an early “Simpsons” writer who was one of the key creative figures on the show in the 1990s, said in a post on X Friday that “Clausen was an incredibly talented man who did so much for The Simpsons.” While Danny Elfman wrote the show’s theme song, Clausen joined the Fox animated series created by Matt Groening in 1990 and provided essentially all of its music until 2017, composing nearly 600 scores and conducting the 35-piece orchestra that played it in the studio.
His colleagues said his music was a key component of the show’s comedy, but Clausen believed the best way to back up the gags of Homer, Marge Bart and Lisa was by making the music as straight as possible.
“This is a dream job for a composer,” Clausen told Variety, which first reported his death, in 1998. “Matt Groening said to me very early on, ‘We’re not a cartoon. We’re a drama where the characters are drawn. I want you to score it like a drama.’ I score the emotions of the characters as opposed to specific action hits on the screen.”
Groening, in a 1996 interview, called him “one of the unacknowledged treasures of the show.” Clausen was born in Minneapolis and raised in Jamestown, North Dakota. He graduated from the Berklee College of Music in 1966 and moved to Los Angeles seeking a career in music.
In the 1970s he was a musical director on several TV variety shows including “Donny & Marie.