Chant d'hiver
At the top of that part, Ysaÿe quoted few words out a Poem in Wallony dialect:
"All seems to complain, all seems to cry,
It snows, and the snow heaps up
against the houses, the wind howls
It seems to me however, to hear the song of our water
quivering under the ice."
At the time where he composed that work, Ysaÿe, always gone in international tours all over the world, oftens absent from home, far from his wife and from his children, and even if it did not fail to find more than largely some confortings, ressented however a deep sadness about that situation. He dedicated this "Winter song" "to my wife", and obviously one can see then, the quotation under a better light…
All seems to cry, but under the ice, "our" water is still alive…
000
Eugène Ysaÿe