Lots of biographical info from his Domestichos Angelos Boudouris (translated to English) [html]
A biography by Georgios K. Michalakis (in English)
A short biography of the Protopsaltis from ec-patr.net (in Greek).
The psaltic "school" of Iakovos Nafpliotis (see Psaltai)

The recordings on this page are the oldest sounds of Byzantine Music on record. Their publication on this site is the first ever publication of such a complete list of recordings since their original publication of grammophone plaques. Most of them were recorded under the label of Orfeon in early 20th cent. Constantinople (1913-1918). Some were done with Nafpliotis' student Konstantinos Pringos, others sound choral and other sound as if a child is accompaning the chant.

The recordings presented here are raw, that is not processed to remove noise and other sound artifacts. In time, the Boudouris' transcriptions (scores) corresponding to the chants in the recordings below will be added. Some of Nafpliotis' recordings have been commercially published as "Arhon Protopsaltis Iakovos Nafpliotis 1911 - 1939 / The first historical recordings of the 20th century". CD from studio52.gr and from greekbooks.gr. Another collection here on cd and tape (use Internet Explorer to see these pages correctly).

The exact dates of the recordings of Nafpliotis on this page and in general are as yet unknown. In Panagiotis Panagiotides' book titled "Themata Psaltikis" it is mentioned that all recordings were done in the period 1913-1918. They mention that University of Macedonia has got 40 plates worth of recordings. Georgios Michalakis has said there could be around 100 plates in total. The University of Macedonia has setup a lab to process and clean the recordings (since 1997) and to my knowledge this is still work in progress. They have transferred all the raw recordings on CD and they were planning to publish a catalogue some time (information from Panagiotis Panagiotidis' book, a research associate of the Univ. of Macedonia under Prof. Antonios Alygizakis).

It would also be interesting to find out which of these recordings are live and which are done in a studio. Georgios Michalakis has said that the isokratema in some of them was added by the late protopsaltis Konstantinos Katsoulis (it is generally accepted that all original recordings were done without isokratema). In time we will describe the recordings to be clear which ones are solo, with Pringos or with (Patriarchal?) choir. Finally, which ones contain an accompaning voice that sounds like a kid (most likely) or woman chanting along.

Note: Some duplicate recordings come from different sources and are presented here for completeness (different sound quality, possibly different sound processing in some of them) The differences will be documented and discussed at some stage.

Τα πιό κάτω μέλη της παρακλήσεως από το αρχείο του συλλέκτη ιατρού Εμμανούήλ Χναράκη μεταδόθηκαν πρόσφατα από τη ραδιοφωνική εκπομπή του σωματείου ιεροψαλτών Ηρακλείου Κρήτης "Ανδρέας ο Κρήτης" που παρουσιάζουν οι κ. Βαγγέλης Λιναρδάκη και Εμμανουήλ Σουργιαδάκης. Μετά από αίτησή μας τα παραχώρησαν ευγενικά στο Αναλόγιον πρός ώφελος όλων. Οι ηχογραφήσεις διαχωρίστηκαν σε ξεχωριστά αρχεία χωρίς καμία άλλη επεξεργασία από το Βασίλη Ζάχαρη. Δυστυχώς δεν ήταν δυνατό να βρούμε κάποια κομμάτια που λείπουν όπως και "καθαρές" ηχογραφήσεις χωρίς επικαλύπτοντα σχόλια. Εάν στο μέλλον τις βρούμε θα τις αναρτήσουμε εδώ.

The following chants of the Paraklesis from the collection of collector Dr. Emmanouel Hnarakis were first broadcasted by Vangelis Linardakis and Emmanouel Sourgiadakis on the radio show of the Association of Cretan Psaltai "Andreas o Kretes". On our request he kindly offered them to Analogion. The files were extracted but not otherwise processed by Vasili Zacharis. Unfortunately we did not manage to find missing pieces and clean versions of some of the pieces that have superimposed comments. If we find them in the future we will add them here.

Listen to Nafpliotis and an almost exact, note by note recording of the above by Boudouris [pdf] (kindly provided by John van der Hoek).

Listen to Nafpliotis [mp3] (and other interpretations [html]) and here is an almost exact, note by note recording of the above by Boudouris [pdf](kindly provided by John van der Hoek).