All great "high" art has its root in religious worship. When it does not it becomes "the cult of the pleasant sensation." J.S. Bach once said something to the effect that "if music is not about praise of God then it is just so much infernal scrapping and blowing." I think that that captures well what I mean.
There is another element to "high" culture that is more chilling: It requires a aristocratic audience that has the leisure to appreciate the nuances of the expressions of that high culture. Europeans love to praise their "culture" but it is not really their culture - it is the culture of the old aristocratic regime of Europe. This is perhaps the most clownish aspect of modern Socialist elites. They seek to become a new aristocracy on the ashes of the old order and pawing through the ash heap they hold up some bauble that they found as there own accomplishment. But they are not a natural aristocracy - they cannot create a civilization but only pick at the bones of the old one. As I have said before, they are like children up in their parents' attic trying on adult clothes. Or perhaps they are like peasant ransacking a Manor house, or perhaps like monkeys rampaging through a museum - they have little knowledge of how their booty came to be or why it is there. This applies to our Socialist elites as well.