At the age of ten he appeared "on a [local] radio show as a solo pianist among a bevy of similarly youthful performers," where he played the music of Cole Porter and others.

There, he studied composition with Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky, although his main interests were forming around music theory and analysis.

[...] The basic goal of Forte's theory was to define the various relationships that existed among the relevant sets of a work, so that contextual coherence could be demonstrated."

"[9] Forte published analyses of the works of Webern and Berg and wrote about Schenkerian analysis and music of the Great American Songbook.

Excluding items for which Forte was only an editor, it lists ten books, sixty-three articles, and thirty-six other types publications, from 1955 through early 2009.

The first, in commemoration of his seventieth birthday, was published in 1997 and edited by his former students James M. Baker, David W. Beach, and Jonathan W. Bernard (FA12, FA6, and FA11, according to Berry's list).