J. S. Bach's psychological type was ISTJ

 I suppose I had always thought of Bach as an INTJ. Had to be pretty conceptual with all that transcendent hyper-complex polyphony, right?

Turns out I was wrong.

Paul Boboc writes compellingly: 

"In typing the greatest musician in history we must let go of biases and look carefully at the information. As a Bach devotee, I've read a few biographies of him: Gardiner's Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven, Wolff's Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician and Schweitzer's Bach: The Poet-Musician. 

Having read these books and listened to hundreds of his works many times over the years (I think I've listened to the Passacaglia and Fugue alone at least a thousand times), I can confidently say that Bach was an ISTJ. It was his powerful Si that allowed him to create works so tremendously powerful in detail, while his tertiary Fi imbued his intricate structures with intense pathos. Bach lacked the INTJ's penchant for theoretical thought; we know he found it hard to express abstract ideas and at one point had a professor from the University of Leipzig, a personal friend, write a letter defending his compositional technique because he had a hard time doing it himself. 

If you read his letters, especially his letter to his friend Georg Erdmann from 1730 and a letter about some wasted wine to a government official, you notice the extreme attention to detail that characterizes him in general and which probably made him an unlikeable character in Leipzig. (The unlikeable persona also has to do with his very weak Fe). His personal writings are very characteristic of S-types, with their strong grasp of specifics and their transparent earthiness.

Bach never seriously questioned the orthodox Lutheran creeds and had little interest in the theoretical underpinnings of the Enlightenment. His library consisted mostly of theology, no philosophy or literature; an INTJ would have had a more diverse library, certainly one containing more abstract material. His keyboard playing astonished everyone and clearly gives evidence of his Si, as do the physical aspects of his life; he was by all accounts a man who indulged in physical pleasures, whereas IN**s, who are temperamentally more puritanical than other types, tend to shy away from those and to prefer mental activities instead. Imagine an INTJ writing the Coffee cantata, or spending years obsessive-compulsively re-writing his works down to the smallest details, or having 20 children (!). It's hard.

In his own life, Bach was more famous as a performer and teacher than as a composer. His organ playing was universally recognized as some of the best in Europe. The famous story of Marchand being invited to compete with Bach in an organ contest, only to hear him play from an adjoining room and leave in awe and shock without even bothering to compete with him, speaks volumes about the cantor's imposing physical gifts. Physical prowess comes more easily to ISTJs than INTJs, who are more comfortable inhabiting mental rather than physical spaces.

Then there's the music. It's inconceivable to me that anyone but a sensor could have written the Art of Fugue or the Musical Offering. Compare Beethoven (INXX) with Bach (ISTJ) to see the obvious difference between an N type musician and an S type musician. N type musicians (Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Beethoven) can be sloppy, even careless, because the full effect matters more to them than the details through which that effect is achieved. S types - Bach and Mozart being the most notable examples of this type in classical music - have a miraculous ability of making every detail matter, and of getting straight to the point without any superfluity. Their economy of style is amazing, soul-shattering. Beethoven, Wagner and Mahler lacked it. Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Schubert also lacked it. Bach and Mozart had it in abundance.

PS. If you're interested in more along this line of reasoning, here's a great and persuasive article on what makes Bach (probably) an ISTJ."

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This reminds me of the sensei at my karate club who is similarly ISTJ:  intensely skilled in technique and a stickler for formal and methodical progression by the book.