The surviving nineteenth-century sources for the sonata carry dedications to Frederick the Great's private secretary, Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf: one of the earliest hand copies of BWV 1035 is annotated "after the autograph by the composer, which was written anno 17--, when he was at Potsdam, for privy chamberlain Fredersdorf."
The alternation of the semidemiquaver melismas with the semiquaver triplet passages along with the passages of coupled semiquaver figures are also typical of Bach's Leipzig style.