Alf Clausen, the longtime composer of The Simpsons who scored more than 560 episodes of the animated series, had died at the age of 84.
Clausen died after a decade-long battle with Progressive Supernuclear Palsy (PSP).
A two-time Emmy Award winner with 30 additional nominations, Clausen provided the music for The Simpsons for 27 years, composing a unique piece each week accompanied by a 35-piece orchestra.
In a cost-cutting measure, Fox fired Clausen in 2017, leading the composer to sue the network for ageism and disability discrimination two years later. He later dropped the suit, and Simpsons producers recognized in later seasons as “composer emeritus.”
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“I think that’s one of the reasons they’ve kept me all these years: they were looking for somebody who could score all those different types of music in small clip-form,” Clausen reflected in a 2017 interview with Consequence. “That’s what’s been fun for me. I think that anyone else who would have been hired for this job and stayed for this long would have gone to the nuthouse.”
Clausen also composed music for the television series ALF, and well contributed to films like The Naked Gun, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Weird Science.