 He adds that the prefaces might not have entirely been of Liszt's idea or doing, since evidence exists that his then-companion Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein helped shape or create them.Overall, Walker concludes, "Posterity may have overestimated the importance of extra-musical thought in Liszt's symphonic poems.We would not want to be without his prefaces, of course, nor any other that he made about the origins of his music; but we should not follow them slavishly, for the simple reason that the symphonic poems do not follow them slavishly either."