Working through the vast backlog of “ooh, that looks interesting” podcasts I’ve downloaded recently, I found a great little feature on Alf Clausen, composer of all the background and incidental music on “The Simpsons”… basically, everything except for Danny Elfman’s title music. I’ve always been intrigued by the process of creating music around the structure of film, and quite fancy having a go at some point. As a fast-paced cartoon show with multiple layers of cultural references, “The Simpsons” must be pretty challenging to compose for, especially as the music ranges from short bursts of “aural scenery” right up to full-length parody songs.
With the hope that my bandwidth doesn’t get completely SLAMMED, I’ve uploaded the 21-minute chunk here…
Mitt i Musiken: Alf Clausen feature (14.75MB)
It’s from the Swedish radio programme “Mitt i Musiken” (*mumble*… sorry, Sveriges Radio…) but the chunks in Swedish are mostly translating and summarising what Alf says in the interview portions. It’s worth ploughing through for the rehearsal excerpts (now that’s what first-call session players sound like!) and there’s a few interesting nuggets of information. For instance, Matt Groening likes having real orchestral music on the soundtrack, in order to provide smooth continuity and sheen when the animation is a little rough and ready. Also, it turns out that Alf Clausen is hugely influenced by Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, which, on reflection, doesn’t surprise me. I’ll be talking about that piece right here, once the Proms season starts…