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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Alf Clausen, the Emmy-winning composer whose music provided essential accompaniment for the animated antics offor 27 years, has died.

His daughter Kaarin Clausen told The Associated Press that Alf Clausen died Thursday at his home in Los Angeles after struggling with Parkinson’s Disease for about a decade. He was 84.Clausen, who also scored TV series including “Moonlighting” and “Alf” (“no relation,” he used to joke) was nominated for 30 Emmy Awards, 21 of them for “The Simpsons,” winning twice.who was one of the key creative figures on the show in the 1990s, said in a post on X Friday that “Clausen was an incredibly talented man who did so much for The Simpsons.”

While Danny Elfman wrote the show’s 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.His colleagues said his music was a key component of the show’s 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.

“This is a dream job for a composer,” Clausen told Variety, which first reported his death, in 1998. “Matt Groening said to me very early on, ‘We’re not a cartoon. We’re a drama where the characters are drawn. I want you to score it like a drama.’ I score the emotions of the characters as opposed to specific action hits on the screen.”

Groening, in a 1996 interview, called him “one of the unacknowledged treasures of the show.”Asked concretely what such an offer would entail, Parolin said that the Vatican could serve as a venue for a direct meeting between the two sides.

“One would aim to arrive at this, that at least they talk. We’ll see what happens. It’s an offer of a place,” he said.“We have always said, repeated to the two sides that we are available to you, with all the discretion needed,” Parolin said.

The Vatican scored what was perhaps itsof the Francis pontificate when it facilitated the talks between the United States and Cuba in 2014 that resulted in the resumption of diplomatic relations.