Ralph Kirkpatrick, the musicologist and harpsichordist whose cataloging of Scarlatti's sonatas is generally considered the most authoritative of the several available, assigned this D minor effort No. 1 of the 555 in the composer's canon. Of course, it probably was not the first of Scarlatti's sonatas, but it is surely among the earliest of those surviving, and probably dates to the second or third decade of the eighteenth century. It was first published, along with 29 other early Scarlatti sonatas, in the 1738 collection Essercizi per gravicembalo (30).

Marked Allegro, it opens with a lively theme whose playful bustle mixes deftly with its sense for elegance and youthful buoyancy. It is a challenging work, the main theme and its related material treading lightly up and down the keyboard, the breathless pacing unyielding even amid the plentiful trills and other virtuosic elements. The latter half of the sonata features thematic development of the material in the exposition. Here the music sheds a tad of its lightness, but loses none of its energy or gracefulness. Lasting under three minutes, this Sonata is strong evidence that Scarlatti was a master of keyboard music even in his earliest days.

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