Eh, illuminated texts were beauty at the cost of function. They looked impressive, but they were not especially practical. Although beauty is nice, I tend to be more interested in things that were strictly functional where we’ve regressed. Musicians certainly report the scores of old masters with their variability easier to read than modern, rigidly consistent ones; easier to keep your place in, and all that. Subtle stuff. And that’s the sort of thing that Lilypond aims for (and certainly succeeds in at the very least partially, I’d say mostly).