Historians may argue over Thomas Tallis' personal faith; the single feature of his existence upon which they can agree is his flexibility. This is a composer who can write a piece of music for one purpose, can adapt it to a different use, and then perhaps later make even a third piece of functional music on the foundation of the first, unrelated one. This is the case with his piece most often known as Salvator mundi. Instead of a serene Latin motet, this music apparently began life in Tallis' hands as a secular instrumental fantasia. Some time during Queen Mary's Catholic restoration, Tallis adapted the piece to a Latin liturgical text, "Salvator mundi." Yet the musical odyssey was not yet complete: later the composer again adapted the same music to serve as an English anthem for Protestant use, as When Jesus went into Simon the Pharisee's House. The strength of Tallis' artistry perhaps shows most strongly in the power of each individual piece: consider its life as Salvator mundi.

It can be difficult to distinguish the instrumental underpinnings of the motet as printed in 1575, so naturally do the melodies fit both the rhythm and sense of the Latin text he chose. That text serves as a Matins antiphon for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and its text pleads to He who saved the world by that Cross to help and save those who sing. The first incise of text appears twice, to two complete points of imitation downward through all five voices, while the second—which mentions the cross—falls quite appropriately on a more agitated, syncopated motive. The repeated prayer for Christ to aid those singing falls on the third motive of the original fantasia, which motive features a motive of insistently repeated notes; the effect is heightened by a plaintively rising sequence in the highest voice. Only the final phrase of the text does not seem intended from everlasting for its music here, yet it still fits: "We beseech thee" is sung again and again on the most tortured and chromatic imitative melody of the entire piece.

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