Is The Musical Saw Actually Considered 'pitched Percussion'?

Finale classifies it as such...and my real question is, are there generally only musical saw specialists, where, in a normal symphony orchestra, the percussionists wouldn't be able to play this, if it was asked of them?

Just looked the instrument up (didn't even know it existed). Looks like you would probably classify it in the same group as the theremin where you need a specialist, and can't just ask some random percussionist to learn to play it in a day.

Usually you find people mastering musical saw outside symphonic orchestra. At least in Slovenia there are a few people, specialised in folk music which can play this instrument and they are invited as guest performers.

No I don't think a common percussionist can play it, it's quite hard to control it to play a tuned melody, no idea what kind of instrumentist the saw could be related to, but I've known only 2 and they were string players, Violin and Cello players, I once tried to play the saw with my violin bow, but couldn't do it, didn't sound at all :veryunsure: