Alf Clausen, a composer and arranger whose songs, interludes and closing credits for hundreds of episodes of “The Simpsons” were so central to the animated sitcom’s success that its creator, Matt Groening, often called him the show’s “secret weapon,” died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 84.
His daughter, Kaarin Clausen, said the cause was progressive supranuclear palsy, a brain disorder similar to Parkinson’s disease.
Mr. Clausen worked on every episode of “The Simpsons” across 27 seasons, from 1990 to 2017.
He did not compose the show’s memorable opening theme — that was Danny Elfman — but he was responsible for everything else, including classic musical numbers like “Who Needs the Kwik-E Mart,” “We Do (The Stonecutters’ Song),” “We Put the Spring in Springfield” and “You’re Checking In.”
Mr. Clausen won Emmys for the last two songs, in 1997 and 1998. He was nominated for 19 more awards for “The Simpsons,” and was nominated nine other times for earlier work.
When Mr. Groening first approached Mr. Clausen to work on the show, he demurred. He wanted to work on dramas; cartoons and comedy did not interest him.
Mr. Groening won him over with his description of what “The Simpsons” would be: not a cartoon, but a show that happened to be drawn; not a simple comedy, but a family drama that happened to be extremely funny.
He also said that the music needed to be diverse, not just incidental riffs but extended bits of jazz, rock, blues and, above all, musicals, which became core to the show’s identity.
Mr. Clausen signed on. “I like to say I can make you feel five ways in 13 seconds on this show,” he said in an interview for the American Federation of Musicians. “We can turn on a dime from comedy to a real poignant scene.”
Mr. Clausen proved both an endlessly original composer — he had to be to keep the music fresh across 27 years — and a careful mimic. When the producers of the show asked him for music that sounded like, say, the theme to a classic Western, he delivered.
And he did it quickly. Each episode had an average of 35 separate “cues,” or musical bits, some just a few seconds, others several minutes long. Mr. Clausen might have just a week to write, arrange and perform them.
He did so with what was already a rarity in 1990: a live, 35-piece orchestra. Most shows had switched to digital production to save on costs. But Mr. Clausen, who as a young musician idolized the film composers Henry Mancini and Lalo Schifrin, had insisted on live performers.
“I look at the orchestra as another actor, another player,” he told Consequence, a music website, in 2017. “I think everybody else really feels that as well. They always tell me that there’s another player involved with the orchestra, and it adds a lot to the story line and color.”
Alf Faye Heiberg Clausen was born on March 28, 1941, in Minneapolis and raised in Jamestown, N.D., a city between Fargo and Bismarck. His mother, Magdalene (Heiberg) Clausen, was a homeowner adviser, and his father, also named Alf, was an occupational therapist.
He played French horn in high school, but chose to study mechanical engineering at North Dakota State University. He switched to music theory after visiting a cousin in New York City, where he fell in love with Broadway musicals like “My Fair Lady.”
He graduated in 1963 and later studied composition at the Berklee College of Music, where he received a diploma in 1966. He taught there for a year, then moved to Los Angeles to try his hand at film and TV scoring.
After several years, he became musical director of “Donny and Marie,” a variety show starring the Osmond siblings. He worked on the movies “Splash” (1984) and “The Beastmaster” (1982) before becoming the composer for the TV show “Moonlighting.”
The series, starring Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis, brought Mr. Clausen six Emmy nominations.
He also worked on the sitcom “ALF,” about a wisecracking alien who lived with a put-upon suburban family. When asked about the similarity between his name and the show’s title character, Mr. Clausen would reply, “no relation.”
Mr. Clausen’s first marriage, to Judy Landstrom, ended in divorce. He married Sally Taron in 1993. She survives him, along with his daughter and two sons, Scott and Kyle, all from his first marriage; two stepchildren, Josh Taron and Emily Norensberg; his sister, Faye Williamsen; and 11 grandchildren.
“Moonlighting” ended in 1989; “ALF” ended in 1990. Mr. Clausen found himself out of work for about seven months. Had he not been so desperate, he later said, he might have never taken the fateful meeting with Mr. Groening.
Mr. Clausen was fired from “The Simpsons” in 2017 for what the producers called cost-saving reasons. After fans protested, the show brought him back on as “composer emeritus,” though his contributions from then on were minimal. He sued Disney, the show’s owner, in 2019 for age discrimination, and later settled.
Mr. Clausen often reflected on the twin challenges of his job: working quickly, and making sure he didn’t repeat himself.
“As the saying goes, I ain’t getting any younger,” he told the website Bullz-Eye in 2007. “The scheduling issue is always a daunting task and quite a challenge just to stay up for it. Every week is its own little surprise.”
Clay Risen is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
The post Alf Clausen, Who Gave ‘The Simpsons’ Its Musical Identity, Dies at 84 appeared first on New York Times.
