Along with 29 other Scarlatti's sonatas, this D major effort was preserved in the 1756 11th Venice volume of his works. It is one of the composer's loveliest, most lyrical keyboard efforts and is in his favorite key: Scarlatti chose D major more often in his 555 keyboard sonatas than any other—76 times! At eight or nine minutes or more, it is also one of the longer sonatas from the pen of the normally short-winded Scarlatti, and it certainly lives up to the singing character suggested by its Andante e cantabile marking.

The main theme is gentle and floats sweetly in the upper register. It often yields, however, to a dark descending figure that enters the calm sonic landscape as if blending seamlessly into its wistful lyricism. In the end, though, it comes across as slightly intrusive; yet, while it strips away some of the innocence of the music, it awakens, if only briefly, a stately character and reinforces the sense of tranquility, even if the ensuing secondary material takes on a slightly melancholy air. As usual Scarlatti develops his thematic material in the second half of the work. Here, the music remains mostly gentle, though it adopts a somewhat more ponderous, bleaker expressive manner. Many listeners will find this D major effort one of Scarlatti's more profound and rewarding sonatas.

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