Former Simpsons composer Alf Clausen drops wrongful termination suit

Alf Clausen, the composer who worked on The Simpsons for 27 years until he was fired in 2017, has dropped the wrongful termination suit he filed against Fox and the show’s producers in 2019. That’s according to Variety, which says Clausen’s attorney, Ebby Bakhtiar, realized after the case was argued back in December that “the justices appeared likely to rule against” Clausen, and so rather than wait and allow that to happen (and risk having to pay Fox’s legal fees), he advised Clausen to drop the case—though he added, in a statement to Variety, “we caught a very, very conservative panel” and “he got screwed” because of it.

Clausen (who was responsible for the show’s iconic score, not its theme song) claimed in his initial suit that he was fired because of his age, as he was 78 at the time, and because of an unidentified medical condition (at some point it was revealed to be a Parkinson’s diagnosis). He noted the composers he had been replaced with were “substantially younger” and “paid less,” leading credence to a theory that Fox, the producers at Gracie Films, and new owner Disney was simply trying to make excuses for cutting costs.

Simpsons showrunner Matt Selman had responded by saying that Clausen, who used a full orchestra and whose talents tended to skew toward jazz and big band tunes, simply couldn’t keep up with the stylistic demands of the show as it is now, saying The Simpsons’ “creative possibilities were limited by Clausen’s abilities.” This was primarily an issue in an Empire-inspired episode that required Clausen to compose hip-hop music, which prompted producer James L. Brooks to question whether or not Clausen could do it and whether or not he could keep up in general.

Clausen’s defense involved pointing out that nobody, in his decades working on the show, had ever directly questioned his ability to compose more modern musical styles, but it apparently didn’t sway anybody. Now, Bakhtiar says Clausen has been “utterly devastated” by all of this and that Clausen’s son has noted a “rapid decline” in the composer’s “emotional and physical health.”