Along with Thurston Dart, Oliver Neighbour and Stanley Sadie he was one of Britain's leading musicologists of the post-World War II generation.
He played an instrumental part in improving professional musicological standards in England through research initiatives, conferences and scholarly publications.
[1] Fortune's speciality in musicological research was in 17th-century Italian music and on the lives and works of George Friederich Handel and Henry Purcell.
[1] After receiving his childhood education at the Handsworth Grammar School, Fortune attended the University of Birmingham from 1947 to 1950 where he earned degrees in music and the Italian language.
[3] One of his other important mentors at Cambridge was Professor Sir Anthony Lewis, then honorary secretary of the Purcell Society and a co-founder of the Musica Britannica.
[3] He collaborated on several other publications with a variety of scholars, mostly as an editor, including a collection of essays in honour of Winton Dean in 1987.