The Simpsons composer Alf Clausen is dead at 84

There is more sad news today: It has been announced that Alf Clausen, the prolific composer who brought musical life to The Simpsons for nearly three decades, is dead at 84.

His daughter, Kaarin Clausen, confirmed on social media that her father passed away at his Valley Village home in Los Angeles on Thursday. “My dad passed peacefully this morning after a long and valiant struggle with Parkinson’s,” she wrote. “I will always remember his silly jokes, the smell of his music charts in his studio, when he stood up in our Rabbit Convertible to hold up the lowering railroad crossing gate after I stalled the car on the train track, his phone calls that always started with ‘Hi, Dudette,’ and the million big and little ways in which he supported me. He left a huge mark on this world and has touched the lives of millions, and I’m so proud to call him ‘Dad.’ Rest easy, Maestro. I will miss you every day.“

Clausen’s first significant break as a TV composer came with Moonlighting, the comedy-drama starring Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis. He was initially hired alongside another composer, with the plan being that they would alternate episodes. However, by the fourth episode, the other composer was fired, and Clausen remained to score the series for all five seasons.

When Moonlighting came to an end, Clausen was looking for work when he was approached by Matt Groening about scoring The Simpsons, which had just finished its first season, but Clausen wasn’t sure he wanted to do it. “I was posed the question, ‘Would you like to score an animated show?’ and I said, ‘No,’” Clausen recalled during a 2015 interview. “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.’“

However, Groening told Clausen that they didn’t view The Simpsons as a cartoon but as a drama in which the characters are drawn, and they wanted it scored that way. “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,” Clausen said. “He wanted something different.” And thus, a fruitful musical relationship was born. Clausen’s first episode of Treehouse of Horror, and he went on to score more than 550 episodes of the series, giving us absolute bangers like We Put the Spring in Springfield, See My Vest, You’re Checkin’ In, and so many more.

Unfortunately, the relationship soured when Clausen was dismissed from the show in 2017. He later filed a lawsuit against Disney and Fox, claiming that he had been sacked due to ageism and disability discrimination. Producers claimed that Clausen was fired for an inability to work with more modern music styles, which sounded suspicious given the wide variety of music he’d done for the series for decades.

Clausen received 30 Emmy nominations throughout his career, more than any other musician. His work will live on, and those ear worms will keep digging. See my vest, see my vest, made from real gorilla chest. Classic. You will be deeply missed, Mr. Clausen. Our thoughts and condolences go out to your family and friends.

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