h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

That post got funnier with every line. I especially liked 'The Arts council took the company's funding away.'

Purcell, specifically Come Ye Sons of Art. Fabulous. A good introduction to it might be by renting the DVD of "England My England", Tony Palmer's film of actors in the 1960s finding out about 17th century England in order to play the parts of King Charles, Purcell, Samuel Peyps etc. It switches between the times, with Purcell music as the soundtrack. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112964/

(Or you could buy it, but if you get it from a*a*o* then watch out for their assumption that just because you bought a film with Michael Ball in it, this automatically makes you Michael Ball's biggest fan and you would love to be recommended every CD he's ever released. And he's released a lot of CDs!!)

The music and the film might lead you into the world of Peter Greenaway films and the Purcell inspired Michael Nyman soundtracks. Or into other music from around the same time, like Albinoni's Opus 9.

I like my classical music visual, and with a proper tune!

Ooh, no. Can't be doing with tunes. And that goes for any genre.

Personally I'm not mad keen on classical period music or the later romantic period stuff, though I'm sure with a good orchestra and live setting it can be good.

Arvo Part has been mentioned, if that is the sort of stuff he likes, then Tavener and Gorecki are usually associated with him in terms of their style.

If you want more modern stuff then there is Steve Reich who is still doing interesting stuff or Terry Riley, Philip Glass or John Cage.

Of course you could go the other way into Baroque and earlier music styles (the early music show on Radio 3 at weekends is a good introduction to all sorts of stuff, just keep the opera out of it for me).

How about fusion?

I know it's frowned upon by some, and yes, there are some pretty horrendous examples of attempts of fusing two or more musical styles, but there's also some pretty good stuff.

This morning I happened to listen to Gustavo Montesano, a guitar player playing classic music à la Flamenco style accompanied by a symphony orchestra.

Or symphonic rock, perhaps?

There's a programme on Radio 4 this week "Baroque and Roll: Townshend on Purcell" where Pete Townsend discusses the influence Purcell has had on his compositions, eg Tommy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nf3kr