Ligeti's Piano Etude, No. 1, Désordre, features what Ligeti calls an "irregular distribution of accents [leading] to seemingly chaotic configurations." He wisely chose the word "seemingly" as Désordre includes a carefully constructed transformation from a metric A section to an ametric B section. Although previous authors have discussed temporal processes in the Etude (Haapamäki, Batchelor, and Isgitt), there are no discussions of the effect of those processes on the transformation from meter to ameter. This paper employs my Composite Downbeat Attack Point (CDAP) methodology, discussed below, to trace the transformation from meter to ameter in Ligeti's Désordre, highlighting the temporal processes that contribute to the metric disintegration. Particularly, the conflicting right-hand and left-hand melodies participate in a quasi-phasing process, generating a composite palindrome of metrical downbeats that becomes increasingly unintelligible towards the end of the A section.

Among those meter-destroying temporal processes is metric diminution in both melodies, which transforms meter into beat; the deconstruction of an established composite palindromic pattern; increasingly dissonant internal grouping structures throughout the section; and non-coinciding phrase-group lengths between the soprano and bass melodies, which drift further and further apart throughout the section. Ligeti's "seemingly chaotic configurations" of accents constitute numerous processes that transform meter to ameter.