While many of Scarlatti's sonatas cannot be dated with absolute certainty, most can be assigned a two- or three-year period of composition. This G major effort probably was written in the early 1750s, a time when the composer was at the beginning of his most productive period. Scarlatti, who died in 1757, wrote most of his 555 keyboard sonatas in the last half-dozen or so years of his life. This one, preserved in the second Venice volume of his sonatas, is as effervescent and rhythmically vital in its approximately four-minute length as almost any he composed.

It begins with a catchy theme built upon imaginative repetition of short melodic phrases whose rhythmic bounce and breathless Vivo pacing impart an infectious character to the music, the whole captivating the ear at first hearing with a feeling of instant familiarity. The material in the second subject is also brilliantly conceived in its rhythmic and repetitive features, and is just as delightful. The development section, which normally begins about midway through in Scarlatti's sonatas, starts a little later than usual here. Bouncy, descending chords establish a relatively subdued mood, but gradually the music takes on the busier and more breathless manner of the exposition.

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