Estimated from our difficulty score, not taken from an exam syllabus. Checked against 333 works on the ABRSM syllabus: the exact grade is right 7 times out of 10, and within one grade 99 times out of 100.
Difficulty estimate by MusicCoach on a scale of 1 to 100.
Most works cluster between 45 and 65: a small score gap often marks a real step. The highlighted bar shows this work among those for the same instrument.
The MusicCoach difficulty measures a work's overall demands (technique, reading, stamina) on a shared 0-100 scale, consolidated from editorial and pedagogical reference points (Henle, exam syllabuses, curation) and our own analyses. It measures neither musical value nor the practice time YOU will need: two musicians of the same level can experience the same work very differently depending on their strengths (hands used to octaves, quick sight-reading…). The confidence reflects how many reference points sit behind the score and how well they agree — a lightly documented score is flagged “to validate”. For a truly personal bearing, the diagnostic and your space compare each work to YOUR estimated level, which the score alone cannot do.
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Each suggestion combines difficulty gap, risk, confidence and skill overlap. The first two cards in each column are the most useful pedagogically.
The safest next step.
A genuine step up, without a jolt.
A useful leap with guided practice.
The sonata has a lively, buoyant character built from bouncing arpeggios and sharp, percussive replies that alternate with short lyrical gestures, suggesting a spirited, slightly nervous dance. Technical challenges include Analyse harmonique (3.6/5): you must detect rapid harmonic progressions and modulations to anticipate accent shifts and redistribute voices appropriately; and Baroque ornaments (3.1/5): precise execution of mordents and other small embellishments on short motifs requires clean finger articulation and strict tempo control. It belongs to the Baroque period and is one of Scarlatti's many keyboard sonatas that blend dance forms with idiomatic virtuosity. (I do not provide a reference recording because I cannot state with complete certainty a single definitive interpretation for this specific sonata.)