TELEVISION

Round 2 of the networks' convention coverage opens this week with a spate of background specials leading up to the Democratic Convention at Atlantic City beginning next Monday. NBC handily won Round 1 with an estimated 55% share of the total Republican Convention audience.

To offer tougher competition to NBC's winsome twosome, Huntley and Brinkley, CBS has replaced Anchorman Walter Cronkite with Roger Mudd and Robert Trout (TIME, Aug. 7), while ABC has Senator Hubert Humphrey and former White House Aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr. as special commentators to supplement Howard K. Smith and Edward P. Morgan.

Wednesday, August 19 DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM COMMITTEE MEETINGS (NBC and CBS, 4:30-5 p.m.).* --* The pre-convention plank-making sessions. Continued Thursday and Friday at the same time.

THE GREAT CONVENTIONS--THE DEMOCRATS (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Perry Wolff wrote and produced this special, as well as its Republican counterpart, an excellent historical essay coupled with photographic evocations of the men, moods and issues of previous conventions.

THE CAMPAIGN & THE CANDIDATES (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). A background survey of the Democratic Party.

POLITICS '64 (ABC, 11:15-11:30 p.m.). Updating on the pre-convention news.

Continued Thursday (10:30-11 p.m.) and Friday (10:45-11 p.m.).

Thursday, August 20

GEORGE GOBEL, A MAN WHO . . . (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Gobel looks humorously at Atlantic City, its history as a seaside resort and how it was selected as the convention site, ranges from bathing beauties to political aspirants.

Saturday, August 22

THE WOMAN'S TOUCH IN POLITICS (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.). Lisa Howard interviewing Democratic lady politicians and politicians' ladies.

Sunday, August 23

MEET THE PRESS (NBC, 5:30-6 p.m.). Senators Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy and other Veep hopefuls.

DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION PREVIEW (CBS, 6:30-7 p.m.). A report on the issues and personalities.

NBC NEWS SPECIAL (NBC, 6:30-7:30 p.m.). Another convention preview.

ABC NEWS SPECIAL (ABC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). And another.

Monday, August 24

THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION (ABC, CBS and NBC, 7:30 p.m. to conclusion). Continued Tuesday.

RECORDS

Orchestral & Chamber Music

Baroque instrumental music is still trumpeting forth in profusion, perhaps as a welcome antidote to the romantic repertory, and because its bright colors and ornaments are enhanced by today's high-fidelity recordings. Three excellent new releases show the style in France, Italy and England:

SYMPHONIES AND FANFARES FOR THE KING'S SUPPER (Nonesuch). The king in question was Louis XIV, who wanted music for every occasion. The supper "symphonies" by Michel-Richard de Lalande are stately, danceable airs. There are also fanfares and military marches by Jean-Baptiste Lully, the musical dictator of the court, and an engaging trio sonata for violins by Francois Couperin. The highly stylized little pieces are given a bright, clear reading by the Collegium Musicum de Paris under Roland Douatte.

I MUSICI (Philips). The virtuoso Italian ensemble of eleven strings and a harpsichord that Toscanini called "the world's finest chamber orchestra" has for twelve years been polishing its late-baroque repertory to a high luster. Here the group plays concertos by pioneers of the form: Arcangelo Corelli (Concerto Grosso in D Major) and Antonio Vivaldi (the "Goldfinch" Concerto for flute and the "Favorite" for violin), also works by Francesco Manfredini and Tommaso Albinoni, a composer much admired by Bach.

HANDEL: WATER MUSIC (Angel). The story that Handel wrote the Water Music to get back into the good graces of George I has been discredited, but such a scheme would surely have worked. Handel borrowed freely from both French and Italian baroque composers, but enriched the mixture with his own cadenced melodies and textured harmonies. Nineteen pieces are arranged here in three suites, according to key, and given a serene and ornamental performance by the Bath Festival Orchestra directed by Yehudi Menuhin.

HAYDN: SYMPHONIES 101 ("The Clock") AND 95 (RCA Victor). The exceptional clarity that characterized Fritz Reiner's style as a conductor is epitomized in this recording, made two months before he died. The studio orchestra included some of his former Chicago Symphony players, and sounds as though it had played as an ensemble forever. After Haydn, said Brahms, it was "no longer a joke to write symphonies." After Reiner, it is an increasingly serious matter to conduct them.

LISZT: A FAUST SYMPHONY (Columbia). Leonard Bernstein brilliantly illuminates this masterpiece of the romantic era. Whatever the quality of Bernstein's own musical philosophizing, he can brilliantly illuminate that of Liszt, who was a Catholic mystic. Each of the symphony's three movements is a musical character sketch: "Faust" has a brooding quality, "Gretchen" is idyllic, and "Mephistopheles" snarling and frenzied. The New York Philharmonic gives the Devil his due with sizzling strings and searing brasses, and then muzzles him as the Choral Art Society sings Goethe's Mystic Chorus, with its tribute to "the eternal feminine."

CINEMA

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT. A treat for the Beatle generation. The holler boys' first film is fresh, fast and funny, and it may even moderate the adult notion that a Beatle is something to be greeted with DDT.

HARAKIRI. A bloody but sometimes beautiful dramatic treatise on an old Japanese custom: ritual suicide.

CARTOUCHE. French Director Philippe de Broca, the brilliant satirist who made The Five-Day Lover, has executed a somewhat careless but wonderfully carefree parody of a period piece in which Jean-Paul Belmondo plays the Robin Hood of 18th century Paris.

THAT MAN FROM RIO. De Broca and Belmondo are at it again, but this time they do better. Rio is a wild and wacky travesty of what passes for adventure in the average film thriller.

THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA. In John Huston's version of Tennessee Williams' play, several unlikely characters (portrayed by Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr and Ava Gardner) turn up in the patio of a not-very-grand hotel in Mexico and talk, talk, talk about their somewhat peculiar problems. Sometimes they talk well.

LOS TARANTOS. With mingled dance and drama and burning Iberian intensity, Spanish Director Rovira-Beleta tells the story of a gypsy Romeo and Juliet.

ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS. This intelligent and tasteful tale of an Indian girl (Celia Kaye) who shares an island exile with her dog is a model of what children's pictures ought to be but seldom are.

A SHOT IN THE DARK. As a maladroit inspector from the Surete Peter Sellers pursues Elke Sommer through a multiple murder case and turns up fresh evidence that he is one of the funniest actors alive.

SEDUCED AND ABANDONED. Young love becomes a savage Sicilian nightmare in a sometimes wildly farcical, sometimes deeply affecting tragicomedy by Director Pietro Germi, already famed for Divorce --Italian Style.

MAFIOSO. Director Alberto Lattuada fills in the background with some gloriously garlicky slices of provincial Sicilian life, while Comedian Alberto Sordi struggles soberly with the insidious Mafia.

ZULU. A bit of bloody British history, vintage 1879, makes a grisly good show as a doughty band of redcoats defends an African outpost against 4,000 proud Zulu warriors.

THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN. As a girl from the mining camps, Debbie Reynolds makes waves in Denver society and energetically keeps this big, brassy version of Meredith Willson's Broadway musical from going under.

NOTHING BUT THE BEST. A lower-crust clerk (Alan Bates) hires an upper-crust crumb to teach him the niceties of Establishment snobbery in this cheeky, stylish, often superlative British satire.

THE ORGANIZER. Director Mario Monicelli's drama about a 19th century strike in Turin has warmth, humor, stunning photography, and a superb performance by Marcello Mastroianni as a sort of Socialist Savonarola.

BOOKS

Best Reading

THE OYSTERS OF LOCMARIAQUER, by Eleanor Clark. In describing the care and feeding of the world's best oysters and the Bretons who do it, Eleanor Clark has written a book that virtually defies criticism, so warm is her writing, so precise her knowledge of the oyster and the sea, so unstinting the love and care she has lavished on her subject.

EUGENE ONEGIN, by Vladimir Nabokov. Novelist-Scholar Nabokov has translated Alexander Pushkin's 19th century novel-in-verse with accuracy and range of meaning closer to the original than any previous version. By contrast, his volumes of notes show Nabokov as an obsessive genius in action--a side of himself that he kidded in his brilliant academic satire, Pale Fire.

CORNELIUS SHIELDS ON SAILING, by Cornelius Shields. A blueprint for winning races--in a runabout or a twelve-meter--as well as a frank revelation of the author, who at 70 is the most successful skipper in the country.

THE SIEGE OF HARLEM, by Warren Miller. Taking his cue from black nationalist tirades, Satirist Miller turns Harlem into an independent nation. If the subject doesn't seem funny in a summer of rioting, it is the best proof yet of Miller's skill as a writer and his knowledge of Harlem, where he lived for five years.

THE HISTORIAN AND HISTORY, by Page Smith. A clear, considered essay on historiography, which argues that what the historian needs to add to thorough knowledge is detachment rather than remoteness, imagination rather than "scientific systems."

SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE, by John P. Roche. The national chairman of the A.D.A. says that Americans have more civil liberties than any other people in history, and goes on to reveal that the Birchers are No. 23 on his personal list of fears--nuclear war is No. 1--clearly a forthright man and a refreshing book.

THE RECTOR OF JUSTIN, by Louis Auchincloss. No better chronicler of Massachusetts' elite Groton School and its wise, eccentric founder, Endicott Peabody, could be hoped for. This intricate, fascinating novel about "Dr. Prescott" of "Justin" finally fulfills Author Auchincloss's long promise as a major novelist.

CHILDREN AND OTHERS, by James Gould Cozzens. Many of the stories in this collection also concern a fashionable Eastern boarding school for boys, and if they come off less well, it is because they focus on the institution itself rather than on the masters and boys. But Children and Others represents Cozzens at his controlled best, and the writing is as precise as in Guard of Honor.

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, Le Carre (1 last week)

2. Julian, Vidal (3)

3. Armageddon, Uris (2)

4. Candy, Southern and Hoffenberg (5)

5. Convention, Knebel and Bailey (4)

6. The Rector of Justin, Auchincloss (6)

7. The 480, Burdick (7)

8. The Night in Lisbon, Remarque (9)

9. The Spire, Golding (8)

10. The Group, McCarthy

NONFICTION 1. A Moveable Feast, Hemingway (1)

2. The Invisible Government, Wise and Ross (3)

3. Harlow, Shulman (2)

4. A Tribute to John F. Kennedy, Salinger and Vanocur (4)

5. Diplomat Among Warriors, Murphy (7)

6. Crisis in Black and White, Silberman (5)

7. Four Days, U.P.I, and American Heritage (6)

8. The Naked Society, Packard

9. The Kennedy Wit, Adler (9)

10. Mississippi: The Closed Society, Silver (8)

* All times E.D.T.

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