Alf Clausen, the composer of The Simpsons, has died. He passed away Thursday (May 29) at his Valley Village home in Los Angeles after struggling with progressive supranuclear palsy, according to his daughter Kaarin Clausen, who told The Hollywood Reporter. He was 84.
Clausen was the sole composer of The Simpsons between 1990 and 2017, and he also scored or orchestrated music for Moonlighting, The Naked Gun, ALF, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, amongst other films and shows.
Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and raised in Jamestown, North Dakota, Clausen was inspired by composer Henry Mancini and studied musical theory at North Dakota State University. While there, he took a correspondence course at Boston's Berklee College of Music in jazz and big band writing. After dropping out of a master's program at University of Wisconsin–Madison, he eventually graduated from Berklee with a diploma in arranging and composition in 1966. In 1996, he received n Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee.
In 1985, Clausen made his breakthrough as a TV composer with the ABC series Moonlighting. He also provided the theme song for and scored over 100 episodes of the NBC sitcom ALF. Afterward Clausen was unemployed for months and a friend recommended him to a producer at The Simpsons. Clausen said he "had no interest in doing animation" and "wanted to be a drama composer," but the show's creator Matt Groening told him "we don't look upon this as being a cartoon but a drama where the characters are drawn, and we would like it scored that way." He scored almost all of the music and songs from Season 2 to the end of Season 28.
In 2019, Clausen sued Fox News for age discrimination, wrongful termination, and retaliation, but he dropped the lawsuit in 2022.
