Tallis' musical development spanned many decades, and his works veer widely across a spectacular diversity of styles. The variety in his oeuvre was partly a consequence of the stormy sociopolitical situation in England in his day. Several times over, policy changes were engendered in the major religious institutions that required composers to adapt their work. England also lagged behind the continent in terms of musical fashion. While massive, chordal polyphony had already come into vogue across the water, the young Tallis was still writing in a florid, early Renaissance style. In the five-voice motet Salvator mundi (Saviour of the World), and other works of his late period, Tallis' music finally caught up with continental developments. It was included in the landmark collection of motets Cantiones Sacrae that Tallis and William Byrd published together in 1575, having been granted a music publishing monopoly in England by the Queen Elizabeth. The motet is not only structured on pervasive, continuous imitation, but it carefully aligns the musical structure with the meaning of the words. Throughout Salvator mundi, the vocal lines are shaped according to the turns of syntax and word-rhythms, with an overall musical design that accords the climax with the arch spiritual plea of the text: "auxiliare nobis" (Save Us!). Tallis' music is never as blazingly expressive as that of say Victoria, Lobo, Cardoso, or Lassus, but it has a grand, impersonally powerful rhetoric. The opening upward leap of a fifth in the top voice immediately tells listeners something important is about to happen—appropriate for a liturgical antiphon—and listeners are soon drawn in to the network of cleanly interlocking, repetitive lines. The first 50 bars or so are spent on the words "Salvator mundi salva nos" alone. The recurring melodic and rhythmic materials are skillfully arranged for maximum dramatic impact; one of the last "Salvator mundis" heard marks a return of the opening phrase transposed as high as the top voices go in the entire motet. Tallis obviously took into account the beautiful accumulation of vocal echoes in the cathedral—the architectural parameters of the music—and so composed Salvator mundi with an indulgently slow, stately magnificence that grows and grows.

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