When Symposion was an artistic circle composed of a core trio who spoke Swedish as their mother tongue but were part of the Finnish-speaking “Päivälehti circle,” Euterpe was a completely Swedish-speaking artistic community that emphasized and promoted Swedish culture and literature. Sibelius was not a core member of this circle but rather an occasional participant in its gatherings. The connection with Euterpe was strongest between 1902 and 1904, while the composer lived in Helsinki before moving to Ainola.

Euterpe was also a Finnish-Swedish intellectual magazine, whose editors were led by Sibelius’s old acquaintance Werner Söderhjelm, who acted as a father figure of sorts. Söderhjelm had looked after Sibelius during his first trip abroad, during his study year in Berlin from 1889 to 1890.

The core group included Gunnar Castrén, Olaf Holmén, Emil Zilliacus, Axel Cedercreutz, Alexis von Kraemer, Sigurd Frosterus, Emil Hasselblatt, Alvar Törnudd, and, in the early days, also Bertel Gripenberg, the Swedish translator of Pelléas and Mélisande—all significant figures in Finnish-Swedish culture. Albert Edelfelt and Eino Leino also occasionally joined them for evening gatherings.

The Euterpe members, like the Päivälehti group and the later Tulenkantajat (The Torch Bearers), wanted to open windows to Europe. This was a goal that Sibelius also wholeheartedly supported. The Euterpe members’ contemplation of symbolism and Nietzschean ideas was familiar to the composer from the 1890s. Although Sibelius later rejected Nietzsche, the idea of symbols as representations of deeper truths continued to fascinate him during his Masonic years in the 1920s.

“Evenings and nights with Söderhjelm, Edelfelt, Sibelius, and Mikael Lybeck in the newspaper’s room at Lundqvist’s Commercial Palace are surely among the brightest memories for the still-living members of the Euterpe circle,” Castrén later recalled.
“It was an incomparable pleasure to see him [Sibelius] enchanted by the atmosphere, to hear his bubbling speech, and to soar to imaginative heights carried by his brilliant thoughts. He is an admirable personality—lovable, sensitive, understanding. Physically perhaps restless and tired, but mentally as vigorous as ever,” Törnudd recounted.

Sibelius moved to Ainola in the autumn of 1904. His connections with Euterpe became less frequent, but many members of the Euterpe circle remained close friends with the composer for a long time.