Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach is perhaps best known to modern audiences for his keyboard sonatas, which exemplify the spirit of the empfindsamer stil
Although the shift in style concomitant to his change in employment was rather drastic, there is a continuity and evolution of style readily apparent in Die Auferstehung. C.P.E. Bach's innovative and unexpected harmonic turns are still present, as are his almost cinematic shifts of mood. Now, though, these devices are not focused with the microscopic intensity of solo keyboard music, but rather enhanced and highlighted through their application to a dramatic medium. Some scholars have observed that Bach's score lends its saving grace to an otherwise mediocre text by Karl Wilhelm Ramler, whose Passion texts nonetheless enjoyed considerable popularity in their settings by a number of composers. It would seem that even the most gripping and effective text would be overshadowed by C.P.E. Bach's setting, which heightens the drama of each poetic nuance and exaggerates the emotional trajectories of the most intense passages. The fluidity of recitatives such as the bass' "Judäa zittert" (Judea trembles) allows an interplay of soloist and orchestra that never loses its momentum; the aria that follows, "Mein Geist, voll Furcht und Freuden, bebet" (My spirit quakes with fear and joy), is marked by the lush and lengthy melismas that accompany the words "Die Glorie der Gottheit strahlt" (The glory of God shines forth). The choruses likewise magnify the surface idiosyncrasies of Bach's style—for example, rendering the gracefully angular melody in "Tod! Wo Ist dein Stachel" (Death, where is thy sting) in jubilant counterpoint. The work's lone duet, "Vater deiner schwachen Kinder" (O Father of Thy feeble children), perhaps best exemplifies Bach's skill at subtle inflection—a gift perhaps developed at the keyboard, but integrated convincingly into his sacred music.

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