Fitzwilliam Sonatas

They were first associated in 1948, when Thurston Dart named them after the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge, where the autograph sources are kept.

[2] In 1974 a new edition of three recorder sonatas under the same name was made by the German musicologist Klaus Hofmann.

Both David Lasocki and Terence Best assign it to the violin,[8] whereas Jean-Claude Veilhan endorses Hofmann's view,[9] and Winfried Michel acknowledges the possibility.

[12] In the autograph of the G minor violin sonata, Handel copied out the first bar a second time at the foot of the first page, with the solo part written an octave lower, in the alto clef and with the words "Per la Viola da Gamba".

[21] The editions by Hofmann[5] and Best,[22] though disagreeing about the intended solo instrument (recorder or violin, respectively), do supply the same tempo markings: The Violin sonata in G minor (HWV 364a) is marked simply "Violino Solo" in the Fitzwilliam autograph.

[15][28] Modern scholars agree that the B♭ major sonata must have been written for the recorder, despite there being no mention of this on the autograph.