The Art of the Fugue, C. 1-12, by Johann Sebastian Bach;       Phil Grant, piano  

I have now posted most of the rest of this work, along with the equally profound Musical Offering, Schubert's last Sonata in B-flat, and Beethoven's Sonata 30, 31, and 32 . Click here to see all.  Also, I encourage all to hear the Preludes and Fugues from The Well Tempered Clavier (C major, Book I, G sharp minor, Book II), along with their attendant essays discussing how the sudden-death the Bach's first wife, and later that of his most talented son, possibly by suicide, brought him to the point of this work's "infinitely moving . . . grandeur and pathos."
     Those who, like myself, don’t know where they’d be, if they’d be, if it weren’t for the greatest works of Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert, might be interested in my book, Cabeza and the Meaning of Wilderness: An Exploration of Nature, and Mind, available here. (24p color photos,$14.95, free shipping in US. Mounted and unmounted prints also available) While perhaps only 10 to 20% of the book directly concerns music, all of it, in one way or another, delves deeply into that wilderness of Mind from which all great art arises. 
     Also, I encourage anyone with even the slightest interest to visit my webpage  “Learning or Relearning the Piano as an Adult; A Spiritual Endeavor.” Since I myself only started at age 19, I feel I might be able to offer especial insight into the difficulties involved, and how they may be overcome. Also on that page I provide information on the stunning virtual piano I use for recording.
    Excerpt from Cabeza Chapter 28, The Final Fugue I: 

Beethoven: “Not Bach (brook), but Meer (sea) should be his name.”
Royal astronomer Sir Martin Rees (in Cosmic Coincidences): “[If we ever communicate with an alien civilization] we should transmit Bach, all of Bach, nothing but Bach. But of course that would be bragging.”
    Cellist Pablo Casals: 
    “Bach . . . is . . . my best friend.
     Bach . . . is . . . forever.”
     And composer Robert Schumann, who died of syphilis in an asylum at the age of forty-six: “I myself make a daily confession of my sins to that mighty one, and endeavor to purify and strengthen myself through him . . . in fact to my mind Bach is unapproachable . . . he is unfathomable.”
     If another human being has had such things said of them, I am unaware. . . .
     Geoffrey Crankshaw, in his notes to The Art of the Fugue, performed by Neville Mariner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields: “Bach was, above all else, a man of the spirit, and nothing he composed fails to bear witness to his profound sensitivity to the numinous. Small wonder then that his supreme contrapuntal creation should radiate such nobility and so great a degree of emotional exultation.” 
 Pianist Charles Rosen, in the notes to his recording: “Nevertheless, if the work does not yield up its emotional secrets easily, it becomes in the end infinitely moving, with a pathos and grandeur given to no other work.”
    Tatiana Nikoleyeva relates in the notes to her CD of the work that after a concert in Karkov, Russia, a concert-goer told her The Art of the Fugue had brought him a “closer understanding of life’s tragedies.” “There is great secrecy in this music,” she concludes. “We shall never know Bach’s innermost thoughts—all we can do is try to discover the meaning.”
    Yes. And if another piece of music, or work of art, or creation of the human mind of any kind has had such things said of it . . . I am also unaware.
     I once wrote in Notes to Myself that I had two goals in life: one mundane and one profound. The mundane one is to play The Art of the Fugue. The profound one is to thoroughly, totally, absolutely, with all my being . . . understand its Source. Or rather, “reunite” my consciousness with its Source.
   There is a story of Schubert I find particularly moving. One evening a friend, unaware of Franz’s syphilitic condition, remarked only half-jokingly that as he had observed the composer and a certain Guisti shared a certain fondness for one another, Schubert might consider proposing marriage. Schubert ran from the house and wandered the streets of Vienna until the small hours of the morning. Sometime later he said: “I am here only to compose.” As I related in an earlier chapter, one morning when we were camped in Cabeza, as Anne was walking around between rounds of sitting [meditation] and cups of tea, I wrote her a note: “I am here only to sit, to play The Art of the Fugue . . . and to drink my tea.” . . . For other excerpts see http://www.wildernessofmindzc.org