Eli5 How did classical music composers memorize their songs back then after creating them?

Question

Let’s take for example the nocturnes of Chopin.

My preferred one is nocturne n. 20

He certainly didn’t have studio machine to record their sound AFAIK

How then did he memorize and write down everything to remember later?

Did he start playing the piano, write down the notes, continue playing or did he memorize the whole song by heart without any writing process?

Sorry 4 my bad English btw. Not a English native speaker.

EDIT : thanks everyone for the explanation.

In: 157

Answer 1

Usually writing the notes would come first. If someone writes music long enough (especially the greats of classical music), they would be able to start to hear it in their heads just seeing it on the staff. They could then play it to test it out, and if it didn’t sound right they could make the tweaks then.