Use of the term in English dates to 1813, a time when there were no established orchestras other than the private ones employed sporadically by royalty and high nobility. A group of musicians and music lovers in London decided to establish a society to give an annual series of public concerts. They settled on the name "philharmonic," meaning "lovers of harmony," derived from the corresponding Greek roots. Despite the disruptive influence of the Napoleonic wars, the society was immediately successful.
The Philharmonic Society was founded, in part, under the influence of the composer Haydn and his onetime pupil, Beethoven. Beethoven's epochal Ninth Symphony, "Ode to Joy," was commissioned by the society, as were many other works. Composers including Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Wagner and Tchaikovsky conducted their own works for the society, and the controversial Wagner held the baton for the entire 1855 season. The success of the society inspired the founding of similar organizations in other cities, notably the Philharmonic Society of New York in 1842.
Societies in Liverpool, Vienna, St. Petersburg and other European cities gave rise to orchestras, which contributed to the growth of music as a popular entertainment. Over time, the line between the societies organizing orchestral concerts, and the orchestras themselves, began to blur. New York's Philharmonic Society, for example, quickly became indistinguishable from its orchestra. Today the term "philharmonic" may simply differentiate between orchestras in the same city, such as the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic.
The New York Philharmonic remains a force in the music world, celebrating its world-record 15,000th performance in May, 2010. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, founded two years earlier, is the world's oldest surviving orchestra and continues to perform a full schedule each year. The Berlin and Vienna orchestras, year after year, are among those contending for recognition as the world's finest orchestra. On a more modest scale, the Seattle Philharmonic is an example of a community orchestra bringing together amateur and professional musicians.