{"id":1923,"date":"2025-05-31T22:06:04","date_gmt":"2025-05-31T22:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/alf-clausen-death-simpsons-composer-1235986811\/"},"modified":"2025-05-31T22:06:04","modified_gmt":"2025-05-31T22:06:04","slug":"alf-clausen-death-simpsons-composer-1235986811","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/alf-clausen-death-simpsons-composer-1235986811\/","title":{"rendered":"Alf Clausen, Emmy-Winning Composer for \u2018The Simpsons,\u2019 Dies at\u00a084"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tAlf Clausen, the Emmy-winning composer whose music provided essential accompaniment for the animated antics of\u00a0The Simpsons<\/a><\/em> for 27 years, has died.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis daughter Kaarin Clausen told The Associated Press<\/em> that Alf Clausen died Thursday (May 29) at his home in Los Angeles after struggling with Parkinson\u2019s disease for about a decade. He was 84.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tGone But Not Forgotten: Musicians We Lost in\u00a02025\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

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\n\tClausen, who also scored TV series including Moonlighting<\/em> and Alf<\/em> (\u201cno relation,\u201d he used to joke) was nominated for 30 Emmy Awards, 21 of them for The Simpsons<\/em>, winning twice.<\/p>\n

\n\tAl Jean, an early Simpsons<\/em> writer\u00a0who was one of the key creative figures on the show in the 1990s, said in a post on X<\/a> Friday that \u201cClausen was an incredibly talented man who did so much for The Simpsons.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Danny Elfman wrote the show\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis colleagues said his music was a key component of the show\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is a dream job for a composer,\u201d Clausen told Variety<\/a><\/em>, which first reported his death, in 1998. \u201cMatt Groening said to me very early on, \u2018We\u2019re not a cartoon. We\u2019re a drama where the characters are drawn. I want you to score it like a drama.\u2019 I score the emotions of the characters as opposed to specific action hits on the screen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Groening, in a 1996 interview, called him \u201cone of the unacknowledged treasures of the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In the 1970s he was a musical director on several TV variety shows including Donny & Marie<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tClausen worked as an orchestrator for composer Lee Holdridge in his scores for 1980s films including Splash<\/em> and The Beastmaster<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was Holdridge who first got the composing job on Moonlighting, the late-\u201980s ABC rom-com detective series starring Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd, but he handed the gig off to Clausen, who would get six Emmy nominations for his music on it.<\/p>\n

\n\tClausen won his Emmys for The Simpsons<\/em> in 1997 and 1998 and also won five Annie Awards, which honor work in animation in film and television.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe was fired from The Simpsons<\/em> in a cost-cutting move in 2017, to the outrage of his collaborators and fans. He sued over his dismissal.<\/p>\n

\n\tClausen is survived by his wife, Sally; children Kaarin, Scott and Kyle; stepchildren Josh and Emily, and 11 grandchildren.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Alf Clausen, the Emmy-winning composer whose music provided essential accompaniment for the animated antics of\u00a0The Simpsons for 27 years, has died. His daughter Kaarin Clausen told The Associated Press that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,94,6,392,278],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-music-news","category-news","category-obituary","category-tv-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}