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The prose is generally pretty easy to digest, but the content comes off a little confused at times; sometimes the author seems to favor historically informed narrative, while at other times he jaunts into a flights of fancy, imagining the character of hypothetical interactions. Honestly it doesn't bother me too much, it's what all academics do from time to time when we try to fill in the blanks, but I found the execution here a little jarring.

That criticism said, I do enjoy how the narrative renders a lot of what could otherwise be a typically dry, academic accounting of various sources and how well or poorly their accounts can be corroborated into a much more digestible, almost storied form. Furthermore, while the flights are indeed fanciful, I feel that a number of them do paint an appealing and very human picture of Bach and Frederick the Great.