Final answer:
The Second Viennese School, influenced by Wagner's chromaticism, led by Schoenberg, embraced atonality and a twelve-tone scale, diverging from traditional scales to establish a modernist musical language.
Step-by-step explanation:
The composers of the Second Viennese School believed that the chromaticism of Wagner led them to adopt and further develop a completely new approach to composition. Schoenberg, a leading figure of this school, introduced a twelve-tone scale and the concept of atonality, which broke away from the familiar scales that had dominated Western music since the Renaissance. This was a radical step, as it defied the audience's trained expectations for rhythm and melody, which were rooted in classical traditions. The development of this new musical language was part of a broader modernist movement across the arts, which sought to express inner feelings, rather than merely imitate reality, as seen in the works of Expressionist artists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Wassily Kandinsky.