This work was discovered in Parma, Spain, in manuscripts dated 1752. The Scarlatti works contained in them are likely from the late 1740s and early 1750s, though a few are thought to date back several years earlier. This Sonata in E minor is an energetic work that prompted English writer and Scarlatti admirer Sacheverell Sitwell to classify it as one of the composer's "velocity" sonatas. True, there are many sonatas by Scarlatti that brim with energy that could be categorized that way, but this E minor effort, which even features moments of repose, has a busy sense about it throughout, and often launches headlong into passages fraught with anxious drive in their obsessive rhythms and insistent, repeated phrases.

The main theme is graceful in its sunny lightness and colorful Spanish-tinged flavors, but its secondary material is sterner and more driven, and features oddly asymmetric, but cleverly imaginative syncopation in its rhythms. The music's flow often exhibits a herky-jerky sort of stop-and-start manner, yet quickly develops a breathless pacing and almost fanatical sense in its drive forward. The latter half of the work, as usual, features some interesting thematic development, though without altering the busy character of the piece. This Sonata typically lasts about five minutes.

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