[1] [The musical saw is] a flexible handsaw played by holding the handle between the knees and bending the blade while bowing along the flat edge.

[2]The saw is generally played seated with the handle squeezed between the legs, and the far end held with one hand.

Two-person saws, also called "misery whips", can also be played, though with less virtuosity, and they produce an octave or less of range.

However, with the start of World War II the demand for metals made the manufacture of saws too expensive and many of these companies went out of business.

By the year 2000, only three companies in the United States – Mussehl & Westphal,[5] Charlie Blacklock,[6] and Wentworth[7] – were making saws.

An International Musical Saw Festival is held every other summer in New York City, produced by Natalia Paruz.

A Guinness World Record for the largest musical-saw ensemble was established July 18, 2009, at the annual NYC Musical Saw Festival.

[16] Caroline McCaskey became the first person to play the American National Anthem with a saw at a Major League Baseball game (Oakland Athletics’ Coliseum) on June 6, 2022.

German actress and singer Marlene Dietrich, who lived and worked in the United States for a long time, is probably the most famous person who played the musical saw.

In the shooting breaks and at weekends both performed romantic duets, he at the piano and she at the musical saw.

Some of these shows were broadcast on radio, so there exist two rare recordings of her saw playing, embedded in entertaining interviews.

The Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi wrote a part for the saw in his quarter-tone piece Quattro pezzi per orchestra (1959).

German composer Hans Werner Henze took the saw to characterize the mean hero of his tragical opera Elegy for young lovers (1961).

2 (1971) and the opera Ubu Rex (1990), Bernd Alois Zimmermann with Stille und Umkehr (1970), George Crumb with Ancient voices of children (1970), John Corigliano with The Mannheim Rocket (2001).

There are further Leif Segerstam, Hans Zender (orchestration of "5 préludes" by Claude Debussy), and Oscar Strasnoy (opera Le bal).

[46][47] Other composers for chamber music with musical saw are Jonathan Rutherford (An Intake of Breath),[48] Dana Wilson (Whispers from Another Time),[49] Heinrich Gattermeyer (Elegie für Singende Säge, Cembalo (oder Klavier),[50] Vito Zuraj (Musica di [sic] camera (2001))[51] and Britta-Maria Bernhard (Tranquillo).