The encounter of a young, virile, and heroic male subject with an alluring, seductive yet dangerous feminine ‘Other’ is an archetypal mythic narrative. It is an erotic topos that is repeatedly evoked in musical works of the Romantic and early modern period and is a crucial one in the early symphonic works of Sibelius. Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of the Island, Op. 22/1 (1895–6), based on the episode in the Kalevala recounting the hero's adventures with the young virgins of the island, is one of the most overt of such examples. Features of this work relate closely to the musical character of the first two symphonies, so that the apparently ‘absolute’ symphonies can persuasively be heard to engage with a similar nexus of meanings.

In the symphonic poem, first performed in 1896 but withheld from publication until after the Second World War, an opening horn call is followed by an Allegro first-subject group initially rather plaintive and yearning but which leads to playful, pastoral figures characterised by an increasing rhythmic energy over harmonic stasis. A long held tonic E♭ pedal finally moves to D♭, which enharmonically turns to C #(Fig. H; bar 127) as a contrasting thematic character is introduced. When the accompaniment turns to pulsating syncopated chords in strings and woodwind a surging melody in the cellos reaches the ‘heights of sensuousness’. Two features drive this increasingly erotic thematic process. First, the expansion of arabesque decorations into ardent melodic turns. In the first thematic group the melodic turn figure had been rather discreetly, even apologetically introduced by the triplet decorative tailpiece to the oboe melody (Fig. A; bars 13–16).