Lentz's music expresses his fascination with
astronomy as well as his love of the Australian Outback and Aboriginal art (in particular the works of
Kathleen Petyarre), and reflects his spiritual and
existential beliefs, questions and doubts. The
Vale of Glamorgan Festival (UK), where Lentz was a featured composer in 2006, introduced his music as "...an awestruck and almost fearful response to the beauties and mysteries of the universe; a massive, personal creative undertaking from which this intense, almost obsessive composer is painstakingly extracting concert works...a unique voice whose music is genuinely moving despite its brittle austerity and unearthliness, and captures some of the most evocative silences imaginable." Lentz's music shows the influence of the French
Spectralists and, to some degree, the
New Complexity movement (unusual instrumental combinations, extended playing techniques etc.). It is often soft, fluctuates between
polyphonic intricacy and fragile
monody and sometimes contains extended silences. Lentz's scores of recent years (
Mysterium) are written in an unusual rhythmic system, where each bar contains four beats, but the beats can be of different lengths. While it is not clear why Lentz has adopted this idiosyncratic system, the textures and colours (occasionally with delicate layers of
computer-generated sounds) superimposed over the top of these rigid "grids" often give it a shimmering or 'twinkling' quality. Another feature particularly of his orchestral works is a sense of harmony incorporating both
microtonality and, now and then, an austere sense of 'twisted' tonality, with the occasional harmonic progression fleetingly reminiscent of
Schumann or
Bruckner. However, these chorale-like fragments are always brief and buried in the texture of the music, giving the impression of something "long forgotten". Lentz has said that in recent years he has been increasingly interested in, and influenced by, the practices of
musical improvisation,
music technology,
sound art and
digital art.
Ingwe is a 60-minute work for solo electric guitar, possibly the longest solo composition ever written for the instrument. It contrasts sharply, in many ways, with Lentz's prior music and takes the electric guitar into dimensions previously unexplored in a 'classical' context.
Ingwe also contains, for the first time in Lentz's output, a short section that relinquishes strict control over the musical material and gives some improvisational freedom to the performer. Both
Jerusalem (after Blake) and
String Quartet(s) testify to Lentz's love of
William Blake's visionary epic
Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion. Because of its vast cyclical structure, Lentz's work has been described by British musicologist
Chris Dench as "almost
proustian" in nature. In the final analysis Lentz's music, born from
"total silence and radical isolation – at the very real risk of hearing nothing at all" (composer's website), seems to be torn between feelings of awe and an over-riding struggle with spiritual doubt and
existential loneliness. == Principal works ==