Daniel Lentz's illuminated Manuscripts are of various sizes and shapes and are scored for a variety of ensembles, from solos to full orchestra and chorus. He has used, and continues to use, only the highest quality cast acrylics and paints in these works. All of the Illuminated Manuscripts appear as abstractions, as a musical score itself appears ... symbols floating in space, but carrying a sonic message that, when performed, becomes Music.

A unique aspect of the Illuminated Manuscripts is that, when one purchases an original three-dimensional manuscript, one also owns the exclusive rights to the music, and one of only two digital recordings of the score — the second copy saved for the Daniel Lentz Archives.

Traditional illuminated manuscripts are vehicles of the collective memory of western European culture. Most of the surviving manuscripts were created in the 700 years between the 9th and 16th centuries. Daniel Lentz's Illuminated Manuscripts, while influenced and inspired by these much earlier works (The Book of Kells in Dublin especially, but also the manuscripts made by Native Americans which he first encountered at the Santa Barbara Mission in the early 1970s), differ greatly from them in that the imagery is purely musical. And instead of inks on parchment Daniel uses modern UV-treated acrylic paints on transparent cast acrylic sheets, tubes and spheres. The result is nothing less than spectacular and inspiring.