Georg Friedrich Händel

Sonata for a Harpsichord with double Keys HWV 579

In his famous artistic contest with Domenico Scarlatti, which took place in Rome in 1708, Handel improvised a sonata in G Major. Two versions of this work have been preserved, both of which we reproduce in this edition. One of the versions is explicitly intended for a two-manual harpsichord, and is of particular interest because Handel notated it on four staves. As the Handel-expert Graham Pont explains in his preface, the piece was later arranged and reused a number of times by Handel and others, so that it became one of the most famous works for keyboard instrument in the eighteenth century.