Only a fraction of Tallis's compositional output was discussed, published or performed in the nineteenth century, and that fraction cannot, at least by current criteria of judgement, be considered his best; of this fraction only If ye love me can be said to have ‘stood the test of time’. The setting of All people that on earth attributed to him at that time is competent but uninspiring; the Veni Creator is unworthy of even such faint praise. The Responses are inherently slight, and the four-part arrangements, particularly as advocated by Rimbault, reduce their interest still further; the Dorian Service is today infrequently performed. The one work that would now be judged to be of significant musical interest, Spem in alium, was, in the nineteenth century, met with critical incomprehension.

The figure of Tallis, however, enjoyed a prominence that extended far beyond this limited engagement with his music, and a detailed examination of the nineteenth-century reception of his music highlights the significant changes in attitudes towards the music of the past that took place during the nineteenth century, and particularly in its closing decades.

These changes were comprehensive and extended well beyond a simple reevaluation of the Latin polyphony at the expense of the English homophony. Perceptions of the role of the composer in the creative process, the nature of the engagement with the biography of the composer, and of the function and meaning of the music were all subject to fundamental change.