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I think you need a sense of time to create contrasts between hearing the expected and the unexpected, thereby creating drama in music.

Dear all, I'd like to refer you to a very detailed account in an article by composer David Matthews: http://www.david-matthews.co.uk/writings/article.asp?articleid=42 Do read it - it's fascinating and very good! There is a real diversity of contemporary composers who are writing works under the name 'fugue.' However, just like poets constantly rethinking what a poem really is, these composers are constantly thinking about what 'fugue' means and how they can reinterpret the basic elements of it in a way that's relevant today. Some of the pieces described in Matthews' article would not be easily recognisable to us as fugues. Like someone said earlier in this thread, 'fugue' is not so much a form as a way of composing, or else a texture. That's not only true in contemporary music - think of the fugue in Strauss's 'Also Sprach' as an example to show how the form can be taken wherever you want it to. Personally, I find the whole idea of polyphony and counterpoint really exciting. The world (human or natural) is full of a multitude of voices, a multitude of happenings, characters, threads, etc., and I love music that reflects this. I am working on a set of three fugues for piano at the moment, and counterpoint in various different guises has been a regularly recurring feature in my music. Who else loves weaving polyphonic threads of simultaneous ongoings into their music?

Wow thank you guys for all your answers! I'll try to be more intuitive and less picky xD