Legendary ‘Simpsons’ Composer Alf Clausen Passes Away

Alf Clausen, the legendary composer who penned songs for “The Simpsons” for over 27 years, has passed away at age 84.

Alf Clausen passed away on Thursday, May 29, at his Los Angeles home. His daughter, Kaarin Clausen, told The Hollywood Reporter that her 84-year-old father was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy eight years ago.

Clausen received 21 Emmy nominations for his work on “The Simpsons,” securing wins for two of them. He ranks among the most-nominated composers in the history of the Emmy Awards, with 30 across his career. Clausen also won five Annie Awards for his musical contributions to the long-running animated series.

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and raised in Jamestown, North Dakota, Clausen took a correspondence course in big-bang songwriting through Boston’s Berklee College of Music. He eventually transferred to the school from North Dakota State University, where he had been studying when he signed up for the course. At Berklee, he became the school’s first French horn player.

His songwriting career began in Los Angeles, where he worked as a freelance composer, ghostwriter, and arranger. Eventually he found work on television shows, including “Donny & Marie” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Hour.”

In the 80s, he served as composer for the detective series “Moonlighting,” for which he received six Emmy nominations. Later that decade, he fittingly composed music for the sitcom “ALF.” He also composed music for some well-known films of the decade, including “Weird Science,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” and “The Naked Gun.”

Clausen joined “The Simpsons” in 1990, for the show’s second season. His role involved creating songs, music cues, and reinterpreting Danny Elfman’s theme with the help of a 35-piece orchestra. Scoring seasons 2 through 28 of the Matt Groening-created series, Clausen scored over 560 episodes.

Of the 21 Emmy nominations he received for his work on “The Simpsons,” 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).”

In 2015, during an interview with the Television Academy for their “The Interviews” series, Clausen said he was reluctant to take the job that would ultimately 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 long-form feature films.’”

But “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening was the one who ultimately convinced the composer, telling him, “We look on our show as being not a cartoon—we look upon it as a drama where the characters are drawn.”

Clausen left the show abruptly in 2017, filing a lawsuit against Disney and Fox in 2019 with claims that he was fired because of a “perceived disability.” He revealed he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and claimed both companies had treated him unfairly since his diagnosis.

Fox producers claimed he was fired for delegating work to others without permission. Clausen ultimately dropped his wrongful termination suit in 2022. His role on “The Simpsons” was replaced by Bleeding Fingers Music, a production company co-founded by Hans Zimmer.

In a 1996 profile of Clausen published in Berklee Today, Matt Groening called the composer “one of the unacknowledged treasures of the show.”