In contrast to the majority of the Dresden composers who focused on church music and opera, Binder's oeuvre is almost entirely of instrumental. Theoreticians of his time described him as a composer of great power. Richard Engländer wrote that "in the Dresden circle Binder held the same position as Philipp Emmanuel Bach in Berlin." The Sonatas of Op. 1 contain a wide range of experiments within the genre: from the Baroque period Binder took the genre of the suite in individual movements, replete with polyphonic textures and contrapuntal techniques; from the classical style, Binder adopted the sonata form along with homophonic texture, often highlighted by the Alberti bass.