In what ways did Jussi Björling evolve as an interpreter during his three-decade career? To what extent was he influenced by earlier singers? To what degree did he himself exert an influence over later generations of performers? These three questions are necessary to an overview of the tenor's artistic progress and his role in the history of music. The first two have been at least partly addressed in many of the preceding chapters. Addressed, but not perhaps entirely answered, for if we try to fit Björling into an evolutionary theory of musical interpretation we seriously risk losing sight of what made (and makes) him unique as a musical artist.

If we base our assessment on recordings and chronology, a case could be made for claiming that any five-year period between 1930 and 1960—with the arguable exception of the war years, when Björling was intermittently depressed, sometimes distracted, and afflicted by a series of physical ailments (including pneumonia and appendicitis)—could be seen as the highpoint of his career in artistic terms. In the first period we see him singing a stunning range of roles with a voice of unique fragrance and bloom. In the late 1930s we hear that voice achieving its fullest technical development, broadening the imaginative scope of his phrasing. In the postwar years we admire the weightier sound of a genuine spinto tenor combined with an increasingly idiomatic command of the foreign languages in which he now performed regularly.