This is another of the early sonatas by Scarlatti published in 1738 as one of 30 Essercizi per gravicembalo. Despite its year of publication, it probably dates to the first two decades of the eighteenth century. This Sonata in G minor is an unusual work: marked Allegro, it is melancholy and bleak, and typically played at a tempo that sounds more like adagio or andante. It is also monothematic and features thin, gray textures, which impart a sense of barrenness amid the work's prolonged brooding. But for all its darkness and lack of color, and despite its obsessive nature, this Sonata is quite lovely in its gentle mesmerism and soothing sense of consolation.

The work opens with a slow, long-breathed theme whose solitary manner and march-like tread convey a sense of deep loss. Yet the music only vaguely hints at anger, and briefly, at that, when rumbling chords ring out in the accompaniment from the keyboard's bass near the end of the two expository sections. In the latter half of the work, Scarlatti develops his thematic material, but subjects it to relatively little transformation, preferring to stay focused on the melancholy mood and to retain the dark, inexorable tread from the exposition.

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