In an interview with Anna King Murdoch in the Melbourne daily newspaper The Age, Peter Phillips, director of the Tallis Scholars, observed that neither he himself, nor any of his singers, was a practising Christian. He explained: ‘We're a professional concert-giving ensemble which happens to do sacred music. It's just very good music.’ He also questioned whether the composers of Renaissance sacred music were ‘religious themselves’, pointing out that laws against heresy would have made them think twice about admitting to atheism. He implies that his belief that music should be approached as ‘just very good music’ would have been shared by the composers themselves, that it represents a position that exists outside of history and was as true when the music he is discussing was first written as it is today. Phillips's belief that music should be approached in purely aesthetic terms is, however, a product of what has been termed the ‘project of autonomy’ of the nineteenth century, and of the early music movement of the twentieth, and is neither self-evident nor ideologically neutral. Despite its current widespread acceptance, it is just one of the possible stories that can be told about the music of the Renaissance and our relationship to it. In this study of the reception of Thomas Tallis and his music I wish to examine some of the other stories that have been told about the music – and especially the sacred music – of earlier eras.